Tag Archives: curb

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street

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Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street
Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street

Loading Dock Doors, Townsend Street. San Francisco, California. July 8, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on the wall of an industrial building with black loading dock doors along Townsend Street, San Francisco.

This photograph was made very near to where I made another I posted recently, one of a pair of freeway overpasses near the San Francisco Caltrain station. After making that photo, I headed back on Townsend toward the station and as I walked along a row of industrial buildings these loading dock doors and the bright light from the morning sun caught my attention. So, in a suitable old-school approach, I pulled out the camera with the 50mm prime and found a way to frame the scene.

If you are into this sort of thing, you might relate to a few small details in the scene that I like. One is the faint shadow of the two overhead electric lines that cuts a diagonal from upper right to lower left, which also happens to be along the same dimension over which the sunlit diminishes. Aside from the predominant shades of tan on the wall and shades of gray elsewhere, there are a couple of bits of yellow-orange on the curb and the sign near the far right.

If you can read the signs – hard to do at this small size – you will understand that it would be a very bad idea to park here. :-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Corner Store With Boarded-Up Windows

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Corner Store With Boarded-Up Windows
Corner Store With Boarded-Up Windows

Corner Store With Boarded-Up Windows. San Francisco, California. July 12, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A corner store with boarded-up windows in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

There probably isn’t a whole lot to say about the subject of this photograph other than it is a boarded-up corner store in the Chinatown area of San Francisco, photographed in morning light last July. The components of the scene are kind of odd, I think: a bit of a flag, green awnings and painted wall, the slanting sidewalk with some poles and boxes, and the layers of older and newer boards and graffiti over the windows. I also though the light was interesting, partly because it was short period when the San Francisco fog is breaking up and the light is brighter but still soft, and partly because of the diagonal shadows cast across the vertical and horizontal shapes of the wall.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Golden Eagle Hotel

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Golden Eagle Hotel
Golden Eagle Hotel

Golden Eagle Hotel. San Francisco, California. July 12, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Man sitting on steps in front of tattoo parlor below the Golden Eagle Hotel, San Francisco.

Last summer, on one of my “walking shoots” in San Francisco, I wandered into a less-than-lovely area of The City – though it has its points of visual interest, for sure. I named this photograph after the Golden Eagle Hotel at least partly because I assume that the dilapidated green apartment building above the colorful (in many senses) shops at street level comprise the “hotel.” Another reason is that I wasn’t sure I wanted to title a photograph “Tattoo” or “Naughty Laundry!” (I don’t know what the “Naughty Laundry” place is, and I probably am better of keeping it that way! :-)

In a sense, every photograph I make is “about” something, though often they are simply about the qualities of the subject or subjects themselves. You could certainly look at this image that way. I was certainly intrigued by the juxtaposition of the very colorful and closely packed shops and the very drab apartments above. The building itself, which may have seen better days, is interesting to me architecturally. What is with the little round windows, with their thick frames, between the conventional rectangular windows? And despite having some interesting San Francisco qualities, the building is terribly run down. A close look reveals peeling paint, wires running here and there, painted over spots of what might have been graffiti, and so forth.

Then there is that guy sitting on the step of “Goldfield’s Original Broadway Tattoo Studio.” There are no other people in the scene, and my recollection is that there really weren’t many people around. He sits, face downward and headphones on, apparently completely engrossed in whatever technology he holds in his hand, and apparently also completely disassociated from his environment. You can find a lot of people like this today.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Motorcycle Parking, Night

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Motorcycle Parking, Night
Motorcycle Parking, Night

Motorcycle Parking, Night. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. February 26, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of a covered area for motorcycle parking at the front of a clinic, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This should be the final image in the recent run of night photography from Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, near Vallejo, California. To recap, near the end of February I joined my fellow night photographers from The Nocturnes for a “Mare Island Alumni” meetup and shoot. I’ve shot this location – virtually always at night – for something like five years now, and I still find new things to shoot on each visit.

Early on I mostly focused on what some call the “historic core” of the place – an area of dry docks, giant cranes, and old shops and factory buildings. Later I began to investigate areas around the periphery of this location and to poke my lens into odd little alleys and corners that I didn’t see at first. More recently I have begun to look at smaller and less obvious features of the place and I continue to expand the boundaries of the areas that I know and shoot. This shot and the companion shot I posted just before it are a bit of a departure from my usual Mare Island work in that the scene is a more modern sort of urban landscape illuminated by modern lighting that doesn’t have the warm glow of the security lights and other forms of illumination found elsewhere.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.