In early July we spent a week in New York City, visiting relatives, wandering around the city, seeing a few museums, and eating a lot of good food. Oh, and making photographs. We stayed in a small hotel in the area more or less dividing Little Italy from Chinatown, and there was a lot to observe right in the neighborhood, night and day.
If I recall, on this morning we may have been out looking for a place to grab breakfast, or possibly we were staring out on a walk to a further destination. I was in street photographer mode, with my small camera out and at the ready, when we walked past this complex little scene, with the interesting graffiti covered “enterprise,” the man sitting inside, and the fellow in the cross walk waiting to cross the street.
Five ships sit at anchor beyond abandoned piers, San Francisco Bay
This will likely be the final in this series of (mostly) black and white photographs featuring this dilapidated pier (piers, actually) along the San Francisco waterfront in the China Basin area. I’ve shared several others recently, but yesterday as I was preparing some prints for a meet-up with some fellow photographers in San Francisco, I took another look at this one and saw that it could work with a more panoramic format.
The ships parked on the horizon probably don’t suggest San Francisco to most people, but it is very common to see them moored out in the San Francisco Bay, where I imagine that they must “park” before or after being offloaded. Quite a few seem to be tankers of some sort. I’ve been intrigued by these ships for some time, and the linear arrangement of five of them on this morning, when fog and backlight made the hills on the other side of the Bay disappear, almost seems a bit mysterious. The piers are also fascinating. They have obviously been there for a long time and just as obviously have been allowed to deteriorate to the point that portions seem to have simply fallen into the water, and it looks like the Bay will ultimately reclaim all of them.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
I’ll be honest and admit that this photograph emerged from a group of exposures that resulted from operator error! While dealing with some complicated and varying exposure issues that I won’t explain here, I switched from photographing one sort of subject to photographing another… but left the settings for the former in place as I shot the latter. My first thought when I went through my files initially was that every one of these exposures would likely deserve to be deleted. But because I’ve been working with motion blur, longer exposures, camera motion, and so forth recently, I figured I might as well take a look and see what I could do with the images.
Essentially, I ended up using a shutter speed that was much lower than I intended and overexposing, creating very high key images. For these reasons and because I was panning to track the small group of birds, almost all distinct detail is gone from the scene with the exception of the birds. The tule-covered islands in the marsh above which the birds are flying barely hold their shape – enough, I think, to imply what they are but certainly not enough to provide any real detail.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Happy birthday to the San Francisco Bay Area’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge!
Panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco Bay in dramatic morning light.
Photographed from near the north end of the bridge, the sweep of the cables leading to the top of the north tower frames a panorama from Alcatraz Island at the far left, past beams of morning sun on the east end of the Bay Bridge, across the skyline of downtown San Francisco, with the Bay in the foreground.
Having lived and photographed in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades, the Golden Gate Bridge has been a central part of my experience of the area. I frequently photograph in San Francisco and across the bridge to the north, and even when the bridge itself is not my primary intended subject I almost always look in its direction to see what it will offer up as a new photographic opportunity. I have been fortunate to be close enough to see the bridge in an incredible range of conditions – at night, in winter storms, at sunrise, and more.
Since the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the bridge is being celebrated today, it seems like a good time to collect a few of my favorite Golden Gate Bridge photographs that feature, include, or are part of the experience of this icon. In keeping with the retrospective theme of such a birthday, I’ve chosen mostly black and white photographs. But first, a panorama…
Golden Gate Bridge Tower, Transamerica Building, San Francisco Skyline
Among the most famous views of the bridge are those looking back across the Golden Gate (which, technically, refers to the mouth of the bay) past the bridge toward the skyline of San Francisco.
Black and white night photograph of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.
The bridge and the city take on a completely different appearance at night. This photograph was made from the hills near the north end of the bridge, looking back through it towards San Francisco.
Freighter departing San Francisco Bay on a foggy morning is seen through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge with the San Francisco skyline in the background. Black and white photograph. September 18, 2007.
I am especially fond of the very early morning views of the bridge and the bay, and I often stop here on my way to photograph other locations. While one can certainly end up completely socked in by fog here, at other times the range of effects of atmosphere and light is extraordinary. Here several ships pass under the bridge on a morning when the fog is just beginning to clear east of The City.
Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, Morning Haze - Black and white photograph of Golden Gate Bridge north tower, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the East Bay Hills in morning haze.
Seen from high in the Marin Headlands, the silhouette of the north tower of the bridge bisects the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on a morning when low haze blanketed the Bay Area.
Clearing Fog, North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge - Morning fog clears from the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.
Classic Golden Gate Bridge fog passes fills the entrance to the Bay and rises up over the hills of the Marin Headlands, with the skyline of The City visible on the horizon.
Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay, Morning Haze
The Oakland area and the eastern section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – both the old version and the new one under construction – seem over one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Morning traffic crosses the Golden Gate Bridge approaching the south tower with haze-shrouded San Francisco hills and Sutro Tower beyond.
Looking south across the bridge toward the even taller structure of the Sutro Tower.
North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Morning
The silhouette of a large outgoing freighter passes beneath the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the distance beyond the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
San Francisco Bay morning fog over begins to break up over Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.
Alcatraz Island and the Bay, lit by golden early morning light.
Photograph of the night skyline of San Francisco shot through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holiday lighting on downtown buildings.
I’ll include one real night photograph of the bridge, though I’ll be sneaky about it and not show the whole bridge. (There are plenty of those photographs floating around and, yes, I have those, too!) Here I shot through the cables with a very long lens on a late autumn night when the holiday lights had been put up on the downtown San Francisco buildings – Look at the far left to see the Transamerica Building and the Embarcadero Center lights.
The moon, in full lunar eclipse, passes behind the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I joined thousands of fellow Bay Area citizens to rise well before dawn and photograph this full lunar eclipse just before sunrise.
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
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
