Tag Archives: license

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

Bus Stop, San Francisco

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San Francisco Photograph - A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.
A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.

Bus Stop, San Francisco. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.

I made this photograph a year ago during one of my summer walks through downtown San Francisco. These walks have become a sort of tradition for me during this time of the year – I take the train into The City, arriving very early, and then head out on foot to photograph various areas, most of which I’ve visited a number of times. I prowl for several different sorts of subjects – the early morning light above the waterfront, people, bits of color and shape, and “architectural landscapes.”

Things can evolve very quickly in this urban environment. As I recall, the first thing that caught my attention here was the solitary figure on the bench, obscured by the semi-transparent material around the bus stop shelter, followed by the juxtapositions of yellow colors on its room and the sign across the street. The scene was incredibly busy, with people walking between me that the shelter, cars and buses passing by on the street, and people moving in and out of the frame on the other side of the street. So here, as I often do in such situations, I used what I might call the “compose and wait” approach – I found a composition around the shelter that centered the far widow and red sign in the opening… and then I waited for something interesting to appear in the right parts of the frame and for the distracting elements to disappear. I made perhaps a half-dozen or more exposures. In one, a bus passes through the frame. In another, blurred people appear in the foreground. But in this one, the person in dark clothes walked right in front of the red sign as another person emerged across the street to the left of the shelter, and no other people or vehicles interfered.

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

Wooden Door, Concrete Wall

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Wooden Door, Concrete Wall - A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.
A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.

Wooden Door, Concrete Wall. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.

I’ll keep this description short since the photograph was taken in a location and circumstances that I have already described more fully. While walking along the Embarcadero on the waterfront of San Francisco I came across some alleys that had been locked up in the past and this time found them open. So I wandered down the alleys toward the water and discovered some old industrial buildings with worn doorways and walls and decided to make some photographs.

Much of this area is undergoing renovation or else being reclaimed by firms that find the slightly old-fashioned and dilapidated buildings to be picturesque and perhaps a bit trendy. Side by side with modern companies and offices there are remnants of a much different and rougher past.

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Aurora Bridge, Seattle

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Tower and steel structures beneath the Aurora Bridge, Seattle, Washington
Aurora Bridge, Seattle – Tower and steel structures beneath the Aurora Bridge, Seattle, Washington

Aurora Bridge, Seattle. Seattle, Washington. May 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tower and steel structures beneath the Aurora Bridge, Seattle, Washington.

In early May I was briefly in Seattle on personal business, and I found myself with a free couple of hours that coincided with a Seattle Photo Walk in the Fremont district – so I left my other business behind, grabbed camera and a couple primes, and headed to the meet-up at the statue of Lenin. Really – it is a long story. ;-)

For those who don’t know, there is a waterfront along the edge of Fremont – the waterway connecting Lake Washington to the Puget Sound by way of the Ballard Locks. North of the water is a more hilly area, and Aurora Avenue crosses from there heading south over the water by way of the Aurora Bridge, which stands high above the water and above Fremont. Almost as soon as I started my “photo walk” in Fremont, I knew that I wanted to wander on over towards the bridge to see what I could find. It turns out that there is a recreational trail that passes alongside and under the bridge, so I walked down that way and made a series of handheld photographs from underneath this impressive structure.

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: 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.
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.