Tag Archives: license

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Urban/Street

Buttnick Mfg. Co.

October 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A person wearing a backpack walks in front of the Buttnick Mfg. Co. building in Seattle, Washington

OK, I admit that this isn’t perhaps an easy photograph to warm up to and, yes, the guy is way out of focus. As often happens when wandering the streets of some city – or, frankly, with other kinds of photography, too – one thing caught my attention and once I looked I saw other things… and then there was an unexpected accident. Despite rumors to the contrary, sometimes photography works that way. (To reassure some of you, photographs also work the opposite way sometimes – carefully thought out and made in a state of prolonged contemplation.)

As we walked past this corner, for some reason the name “Buttnick Mfg. Co.” caught my attention all by itself. This, and the visual appearance of the sign got me thinking about how the presentation and appearance of commercial entities has changed. Today, if “Buttnick Mfg. Co.” was starting up in this part of Seattle or almost any other relatively large city, there would be plastic signs, a carefully contrived sign designed to present and foster a particular way of viewing the firm, electronic lights, and probably a motto along the lines of, “Innovative Design and Manufacturing for Today’s Buttnick Buyer.” But this sign was probably painted by some local sign-painter and it offers nothing more than the name of the company, which is probably the name of the founder and perhaps someone who actually worked there. But, urban development being what it is, it looks to me like Buttnick is probably no longer to be found, and instead we see a group of smaller shops inside the building. (There now are electronic signs in the window and there is a SALE going on.) About that person in the photograph… while I was planning to include the people on the far side of the street as they walked in front of the building, the out-of-focus, photobombing, Seattle street person was entirely accidental – but somehow appropriate.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Unnamed Lake, Early Morning

October 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light and cloud-filled sky reflected in the surface of an unnamed sub-alpine lake in the southern Sierra Nevada range, Kings Canyon National Park

This may have been the morning with the most dramatic light during our mid-September trip to photograph in the High Sierra back-country of Kings Canyon National Park, when a group of four photographs spent 6 nights in a beautiful 11,000′ location not far to the west of the crest of the range. Our camp was on a small rise just above my camera position, and we spent out days either looking at variations on essentially this view or wandering about in the alpine “neighborhood,” exploring and making photographs.

I have some experience with Sierra weather and I can often make some decent judgments about what is going on and where things may be headed. However, during this “shoulder season” when the transition from summer to fall and towards winter is taking place, all bets are off! During the summer, when it isn’t just another blue sky day in the Sierra, a common pattern starts with fairly clear weather, introduces a few small clouds by mid or late morning, and then builds toward possible thunderstorms and afternoon/evening showers. But this morning began with overcast that was distinctly un-thunderstorm-like, the sort of thing that I find almost impossible to read. Were we seeing some evidence of a larger pattern related to the onset of winter-season Pacific fronts? Was it merely a local weather situation that would dissipate as the day wore on? In the end, we did end up with showers late in the afternoon – as we did on over half of the days on this trip – but on this morning the only thing I knew for certain was that the light on the peaks below the cloud-dotted sky was exceptionally beautiful.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Yaquina Bay Bridge

October 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Yaquina Bay Bridge, Newport, Oregon

Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area from a week in the Seattle area back in August, we decided to take the long way back and turn a two-day trip into a four-day trip. After spending a day in Portland, we headed southwest to the Oregon Coast Highway (US 101) and followed that south into the northwest corner of California and then on home.

To my eye, the Oregon coast is in some ways familiar, having some similarities to parts of the northern and central California coastlines that I know quite well. But it seems generally a bit more remote – especially by comparison to the California coast near the San Francisco and Monterey areas – and the ocean seems a bit wilder. The towns are mostly further apart and smaller. Newport is one of the larger cities, presumably due to the large and protected port at Yaquina Bay. The coast highway crosses this bay on the striking Yaquina Bay Bridge, with its beautiful arch shapes.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

October 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dry summer grasses in Dana Meadow near Tioga Pass, forest leading to Kuna Crest

I think of this photograph as being, in some ways, very unremarkable. In a few other ways there are some things that are at least a bit unusual about it, though this probably isn’t obvious. The scene is one that is familiar to anyone who has driven over Tioga Pass between the eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park and west side destinations. The Yosemite Sierra along this route is a very diverse place, but the large sub-alpine meadows surrounded by forest and higher peaks is very common and characteristic of the area. Sierra visitors are also probably familiar with the annual seasonal transition from lush, green meadows to drier, brown meadows.

So what is a bit unusual about this scene? For one thing, I shot it during more or less the midday hours. This is not typically when I photograph scenes like this one, but this daytime view is probably the sort of thing that we see most often when we are actually there in the range. The color of the meadow grass is also a bit unusual – not that this coloration occurs, but that it happened so early in the season this year. The almost complete absence of green in the meadow is more characteristic of a time several weeks later than this early August date, when typically we might see a combination of dry and lush. But this year has been anything but a typical one in the Sierra and in much of California. Last winter was extremely dry, and there was barely any precipitation after the new year started – and this was the second drought year in a row. The conditions in the Sierra, as seen here, are not unprecedented, but they are very unusual.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: license

Buttnick Mfg. Co.

Unnamed Lake, Early Morning

Yaquina Bay Bridge

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.