Tag Archives: historic

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Morning, Caffe Trieste

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Morning, Caffe Trieste
Patrons in line for coffee at Caffe Trieste, San Francisco.

Morning, Caffe Trieste. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Patrons in line for coffee at Caffe Trieste, San Francisco.

Last week I spend considerable time in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. I’m a member of Studio Nocturne a group of night photographers (descended from “The Nocturnes”) who have been photographing and exhibiting together for decades. Every fall we do an “open studio” as part of The City’s Artspan Open Studio event. This year we were in the Live Worms Gallery on Grant in North Beach. We’ve been in various locations over the years, and I think this may have been one of the best spots we’ve used — lots of foot traffic, lots of places nearby to eat and drink, great atmosphere. (Terrible parking though!)

Each day I arrived an hour or so before we opened, and on the last day, Sunday, I headed a half block up Grant to this famous espresso shop. You might not know it if you just dropped in on a Sunday morning, like I did, but this is a somewhat historic location in San Francisco. In addition to being a meeting place for all sorts of interesting folks for years, it was the first espresso bar on the West Coast.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: New York City

Rebuilding, Manhattan

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Rebuilding, Manhattan
Cranes atop the new World Trade Center building.

Rebuilding, Manhattan. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cranes atop the new World Trade Center building.

Those who recall the events of 9/11 have a variety of memories of that date and what followed. The subject is too big for me to claim to address it in two paragraphs and a photograph, so I’ll simply recall a few things of my own from that date. Back then it was my habit to get up early, turn on the radio while having breakfast, and listen to news. The first report here on the West Coast lacked much detail but mentioned a plane hitting one of the towers. I immediately thought of older incidents where small planes struck tall buildings, and I assumed it was such a story. But from there began a crescendo of news that got worse and worse over the day and beyond — thousands died and America went to war and the effect still reverberate.

On a visit to New York around New Year’s Day 2000 we had ridden the elevators and climbed the stairs to venture out on the catwalks above one of the towers at night. Among other things, we had watched passing planes from that vantage point. We did not visit New York again until very close to exactly one decade after the attack. Thinking back, we somehow mostly managed to avoid the WTC site until late in the visit when we finally went there. It was an overwhelming experience, though at that point it was a construction site — a place of growth rather than destruction — but the fact of what had happened there could not be ignored. I made the photograph of the new tower under construction from the Brooklyn Bridge.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heidelberg Thingstätte

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Heidelberg Thingstätte
An outdoor theater with a history dating to the 1930s in the hills above Heidelberg, Germany.

Heidelberg Thingstätte. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An outdoor theater with a history dating to the 1930s in the hills above Heidelberg, Germany.

This photograph has been sitting on my computer for months as I’ve wondered what the heck to write about it. I’m still not sure of the best way to address what it is or its history, partly due to the fact that my actual knowledge of its background is not that deep and because that background at least seems more than a bit fraught. (You can find a good primer by going to the wikipedia entry and then to the related entry on “Thingspiele.”) Basically, this facility and others like it were created in Germany in the 1930s as an expression of some combination of nationalism and Nazism as I understand it.

It is a strange and sobering experience to come upon such a place, especially if you were, like us, unaware of its existence before you arrived. Aside from films from that era (and modern films that channeled some of the imagery, including Indiana Jones movies) this is outside our experience. As I recall, before we arrived here there may have been some nervous mention of the “Nazi amphitheater,” but I didn’t get it until we walked into the place from the area of the stage and looked up at the gigantic amphitheater. We climbed the stairs, exited at the top, and continued on to a much older architectural relic where we remained as the afternoon turned to evening.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Point Sur, December Sky

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Point Sur, December Sky
High clouds, brilliant reflecting light on the water, and fog at Point Sur.

Point Sur, December Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High clouds, brilliant reflecting light on the water, and fog at Point Sur.

There is a lot of “accepted wisdom” about photography that turns out to be not quite true when you stop and consider your actual picture-making experience..Yesterday I was having a conversation with a photographer friend (Hi, Charlie!) about various things, including the way that some photographs don’t quite make sense to us until we return to them long after making the original exposure. If one ideal is to pre-visualize the photograph perfectly (and I do believe in the value of pre-visualizing), then it would seem that being surprised months or years later to find that a forgotten image works is hard to explain. But it happens — quite a lot, actually. One of my ideas about this is that at first we are too invested in what we believe the photograph to be that we are unable to look beyond that and see what it actually is.

All of this is a long way of getting to a point about this photograph. When I first viewed it right after the day I visited the Big Sur coast, I had a hard time with certain aspects of the light and the color and, to a lesser extent, the way it was framed. Originally I settled on a black and white interpretation. (Yes, a neat way of copping out about the color issues!) Recently I went back and looked at it again, and this is the result. I ended up with a slightly different crop, some work to lighten portions of the scene, and some new thinking about color of clouds and sky and about how to handle the bright yet low contrast reflections on the water out near the horizon.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.