Tag Archives: francisco

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Windows, Davies Symphony Hall

April 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Upper story windows on the curved facade of Davies Symphony Hall reflect the forms of nearby buildings, San Francisco.

This is another of the “opera house” photographs made within or from the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco during last summer’s San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. Even though (or perhaps “especially because?”) I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I virtually always have a camera with me when I go to The City – sometimes even for musical performances. Because it was June and the sun was setting late, and because the very long performance that night was to start at 7:00 p.m., there was still plenty of light before the performance to make photographs inside the Opera House and from its windows.

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, the home of the San Francisco Symphony, is directly across the street from the opera house, and each building’s upper floors provide a good view of the other building. For this photograph I snapped on a longer lens – yes, I’m pathetic enough to show up at an opera performance with more than one lens in my bag! – and was able to compose a tighter image of the curving upper floor windows of Davies Hall.

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

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House

March 30, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

We are fortunate to have season tickets to San Francisco Opera. (No. Not box seats. Not even orchestra seats. But, still, the opera… :-) So we spend a fair amount of time in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco and wander around the place a bit before shows and during intermissions. I find the whole place architecturally interesting, and some day I would love to have an opportunity to go in there with all of the right gear and have free run of the place to make photographs.

But for now I have to make do. This particular entry and the stairwell beyond have intrigued me for a while. Long before I made this photograph I had made a few iPhone images of the scene and thought about what it contains and some of the reasons that it must attract me. Last summer we went to the San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring,” and due to the somewhat extreme length of the component operas, many of the performances started fairly early – this one started at 7:00 p.m., meaning that there was plenty of light coming in from the windows to the right of the scene. On this evening I had brought along a camera body and a single 50mm prime, which turned out to be just about the right lens for this scene.