Tag Archives: downtown

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

Door Number Fifty-Five

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Door Number Fifty-Five - Door #55, rusted frame, and weathered concrete wall, San Francisco.
Door #55, rusted frame, and weathered concrete wall, San Francisco.

Door Number Fifty-Five. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Door #55, rusted frame, and weathered concrete wall, San Francisco.

This will be the first in a series of three “door photographs” I made in one small waterfront alley along San Francisco’s Embarcadero one morning in April. This alley lies behind a steel gate that has often been closed when I have passed by before. I’ve been intrigued by the spot, but unable to do more than try to look through the closely spaced mesh of the gate, but on this morning the gate was wide open and people seemed to be coming from and going to some businesses or offices beyond, so I just walked in and made some photographs of the appealingly decayed parts of the old buildings on this pier.

Several of the doorways, featuring large roll-up doors, were marked by numbers simply stenciled directly on the rough concrete walls. All of the exterior surfaces showed signs of neglect and the whole scene had a utilitarian quality about it – not a thing appeared to have been done to intentionally improve the look of the place. The concrete was marked with seemingly-random splotches of paint, the large check mark you see here and more. The rusted frame of the doorway looked someone might have run into it with a truck or some other large thing at some point, leaving it bent awkwardly inward.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Abstract, Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Visual Puzzle with Tree

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Visual Puzzle with Tree - A tree with early spring greenery against a backdrop of the reflecting windows of downtown San Francisco buildings.
A tree with early spring greenery against a backdrop of the reflecting windows of downtown San Francisco buildings.

Visual Puzzle with Tree. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tree with early spring greenery against a backdrop of the reflecting windows of downtown San Francisco buildings.

On a mid-April walk though portions of downtown San Francisco to make photographs, while passing through the financial district I was these branches with new spring leaves juxtaposed with a conjunction of building angles, reflected and distorted light, and colors that created a wild abstraction.

The urban environment often holds visual attractions that are not always immediately scene and which sometimes require one to look past the more obvious grit and turmoil. (Those, too, can be a photographic subject… but not this time.) In downtown concrete canyons with glass covered buildings, there is a constantly varying world of wild distortions and conjunctions and perspectives. If you think about it, very little of what you think you see in this photograph is really  “there.” The thing the fills the largest portion of the frame is a crazily distorted reflection of other building and sky, fractured and bent by the distortions from the glass – in essence you don’t really see this building at all!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Sports

Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay

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Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay - A sailboat in morning light on the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California.
A sailboat in morning light on the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California.

Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A sailboat in morning light on the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California.

From time to time I take the train to San Francisco very early in the morning and then photograph while walking around the City. I often start by walking towards the Embarcadero waterfront, especially on sunny mornings when the haze over the bay is beautifully backlit, sometime so much that the glow obscures the East Bay cities and even the hills beyond. This was one of those mornings.

I had begun by photographing a bridge and then a construction site in the Mission Bay area, but I then headed back towards AT&T park, passing in on the walkway that travels along the waterfront. As I passed this area I had an idea that the atmosphere might be just about right, but I also realized that much of the foreground included subjects that I didn’t want in the frame. I was just in the process of switching to a longer lens – so that I could limit my field of view to an areas between the obstructions – when I saw this sail boat begin to approach from the right. I quickly finished the lens switch and moved to a spot that isolated this section of the bay from any other distracting elements, and almost immediately the boat passed across it. I had only a few seconds to work handheld before the boat passed closer to stuff I didn’t’ want in the frame and before a small motorboat accompanying it caught up.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building Facade, Reflections

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Building Facade, Reflections - The facade of a San Francisco building reflects the image of nearby buildings and the sky.
The facade of a San Francisco building reflects the image of nearby buildings and the sky.

Building Facade, Reflections. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The facade of a San Francisco building reflects the image of nearby buildings and the sky.

I enjoy looking for reflections in large, glass-facade downtown buildings in San Francisco and other urban centers. I find the reflections fascinating, especially when they hold complete images of other buildings or sky, the way that they acquire various distortions, and when the reflections begin to visually merge with the image of the building itself.

I spotted this building as the train approached the Fourth and Townsend Caltrain Station in San Francisco, so by the time the train stopped I had figured out that I needed to wander on over to this spot to see if I could find a photograph. I made a bee-line for the general area of the building that I had seen, and I soon figured out who to put together an image that included a wide range of materials: the building itself, the interior spaces beyond the window glass, the reflections of sky and clouds, and more. I especially like the bits of orange reflection from a building behind my camera position.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.