Tag Archives: frame

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

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Moonlit Stairs and Windows - Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.
Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

Moonlit Stairs and Windows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

This month I have had the opportunity to return to the ongoing task for filing through older raw files to see what I missed the first time around. (The task also leads to deleting some files that I originally held on to.) For me this is an important ritual, as I often accidentally “leave behind” some photographs when I first review them – either I get to busy and move on before I fully explore them, or in some cases I simply don’t yet “see” the photograph when I look at it too soon after making it. I have a theory about the latter issue. Sometimes I think I’m so invested in what I hoped or thought the photograph would be that I fail to see what it really is, at least until I’ve waited a while.

The subject of this photograph is the exterior of a building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, a place that I have photographed only in the dark! I have worked with this building before. It is superficially a pretty uninteresting structure, but some of the unusual exterior stairways become interesting compositionally when illuminated by moonlight as in this photograph. I’ll share a few odd technical details about this one, too. The exposure time was nearly 8 minutes! And the capture was still underexposed. Since I cannot meter a scene like this, I often make my first exposure based on some sort of educated hunch – and I guess I just couldn’t imagine that I’d have to stand there any longer than this! Of course, because of the distance between the close-in railing and the far portions of the upper story, I had to use a small aperture of f/16. And being concerned about noise I shot at ISO 200. In the dark. Right. So one reason that I think I neglected to work with this file was that it seemed underexposed – OK, it was underexposed, even given the very dark subject of the scene. However, when I began to work with the raw file I discovered that I could push it the equivalent of several stops and the image would still hold good quality without obtrusive noise. I like the odd combination of shapes and angles, and in the end I think the very dark interpretation is actually the right one for this subject.

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: 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.
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: Urban/Street

Man Crossing Bridge

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Man Crossing Bridge - A man crossing a bridge in the China Basin area of San Francisco, California.
A man crossing a bridge in the China Basin area of San Francisco, California.

Man Crossing Bridge. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man crossing a bridge in the China Basin area of San Francisco, California.

Two bridges crossing the inlet that passes AT&T Park (including “McCovey Cove”) are visible in this photograph. I’m not enough of a historian to have really researched these bridges, though I think that both are or were draw bridges and that at least the far one dates to the early twentieth-century. They are interesting anachronisms in areas that are now quite different from when the bridges were built – much of the surrounding area is not filled with new office and apartment/condominium buildings (one of which is barely seen along the waterfront at the far left) and often crowded with people attending San Francisco Giants games.

As I often do when photographing certain subjects, I began here by trying to create a composition that just included the structure of the bridge, especially with the pattern of the metal grate the forms the roadway here. Then I noticed that a pedestrian was approaching, so I thought I’d see if he might end up in interesting places within the composition. My original idea was to make the exposure before he reached the spot where his is located in this frame, but at the exact right moment a car crossed the bridge in front of him!

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

Door Number Three

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Door Number Three - A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.
A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

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

A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

There is not a whole lot to write about this photograph, except that it is another in a sequence of photographs that I made in a small alley off of the Embarcadero in San Francisco, an alley that extends between buildings toward the waterfront and which has often been locked up when I have walked by there previously. Since it and several similar alley ways were open on this morning, I took the opportunity to wander into them and photograph some of the old buildings that sit on these waterfront piers, focusing mostly on small details.

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.