Tag Archives: interior

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Automobile Graveyard

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Desert Automobile Graveyard
Desert Automobile Graveyard

Desert Automobile Graveyard. Death Valley National Park, California. March 4, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of old automobiles abandoned and left to decay in a gully at an old desert mining site

I have passed this old mining site quite a few times, looked up at it, and kept going. On this morning I had a bit of extra time so I decided to pause and poke around a bit. Certain obvious signs of the presence of an old mine are clear from nearby, but a bit more exploration revealed a more extensive than expected site – as is often the case. Although an old gravel road headed into the area, I decided to first walk up the road, partly to avoid nasty surprises while driving and partly so that I would see a bit more – which is typically what happens when I’m on foot rather than inside my vehicle.

The gravel road twisted up a small gully and soon reached an area that revealed views of quite a bit more mining evidence than I had suspected. I’m certain that if I had continued to explore that I would have found even more, but I’ll save that for another visit. I often have this feeling that these sites should be much older than they really are, and I’m still somewhat surprised to find that some of them were electrified. The surprise at this location was the number of not-really-that-old vehicles that had been abandoned. They are decades old, but I’m guessing that they might date to roughly the WWII era or even a bit later which, in the grand historic scheme, isn’t all that long ago. Several of these vehicles had been abandoned, somewhat oddly, in the bottom of a wash that must flood at least occasionally, considering the amount of gravel that swamped their undersides. The back of this one was open, so I positioned my tripod just outside the car and shot through it toward the other abandoned vehicles. (If you find and explore such places, please be extremely careful to leave things as they are. The effects of our individual disruptions are cumulative and accelerate the destruction and eventual disappearance of these sites.)

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.
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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

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House

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

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House. San Francisco, California. June 29, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building

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Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building
Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building

Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building. New York, New York. August 22, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A double-reflection of late light from an adjacent building appears in the upper story of this window-covered industrial building near the High Line Park in New York City.

This is another of my photographs from New York City’s High Line Park, made during my late August visit to the city earlier this year. For those who may not know, the High Line is a relatively new (and still under construction) urban park in Chelsea that is “elevated,” being built on the bed of the old elevated railway that passed through here. The park is tremendously popular, especially on summer evenings.

Aside from being a pleasant place to walk, the High Line affords some interesting views that are usually not quite this accessible. There are not to many places where you can walk through a busy urban environment such as Manhattan for a mile or so, out in the open, a couple of stories above street level, with largely unobstructed views of subjects near and far, and above and below. Here the park passes between some taller buildings that are closely spaced, creating an interesting lighting situation. (Oddly, it is a kind of lighting that I often look for when shooting landscape or nature subjects.) The sun is behind the building in the photograph, so the building is largely lit by light from the open sky plus light reflected from the building behind my camera position. You can see that other building in the windows here, the upper floors in direct sun light and the lower in shadow.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Construction Lift, Building Interior

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Construction Lift, Building Interior
Construction Lift, Building Interior

Construction Lift, Building Interior. San Francisco, California. July 12, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

I suppose that posting this photograph is the web site equivalent of switching channels – this might be a bit jarring after weeks of Death Valley and other landscape/nature subjects.

I did not quite complete my end-of-year task of going through all of last year’s raw files back in December, so I have been returning to the task bit by bit over the past few weeks. I’m currently working with some photographs from San Francisco, made back in July 2010 when I did some street photography. In old-school style I stuck a 50mm prime on my full frame DSLR and headed out.

At one point I was exploring some waterfront areas of The City and poking my nose into windows of some buildings that were undergoing renovations. Among a few other scenes from this location, I found this one featuring… wait for it!… a piece of construction equipment, posing fetchingly in front of some nice, diffused light coming in from a window out of the frame to the left. I’m still not quite sure why, but I like this image. (Is it perhaps the R2D2-like quality of the orange lift?)

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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.