Tag Archives: look

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Look. No Train Horn

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Look. No Train Horn
Sign near a light rail crossing in an old industrial area.

Look. No Train Horn. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sign near a light rail crossing in an old industrial area.

These signs are along one of the routes I take on my (nearly) daily urban walks. Sometimes the walks stick to tree-lined residential streets, but some of the routes take me into older areas that are a bit rougher around the edges, many of which feature old businesses and shops. There are still rail lines through some of these areas, though they are rarely used — and some have been closed off or even converted to non-rail uses. Here the local light rail transit system follows the route of the old tracks and crosses near an intersection where I found these signs.

Until a few months ago I frequently encountered the light rail trains at crossings like this one. But this is a Valley Transit Authority (VTA) route, and that is the entity that was the victim of a mass shooting earlier this year that tragically took the lives of a number of employees who work on the light rail system. The system remains shut down and there is so far no word on when it will reopen.

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: Urban/Street

Look

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Look
A “LOOK” sign at a light rail crossing.

Look. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A “LOOK” sign at a light rail crossing.

It seems to me that few photographers are able to resist at least occasionally photographing signs that catch their attention. (Not everyone will admit to it though!) I’m pretty sure I recall that my father collected them, and I’ve done it fitfully for decades. (Many years ago I was an avid cyclist, and I always used to get a laugh out fo a sign that I passed on one of my routes. It simply announced: “1/4 MILE AHEAD.”) Signs can be graphically interesting, funny or ironic depending on where they are found, or even useful for certain non-photographic purposes.

I had been looking (ironic, yes?) at this sign for months as I passed it along one of my pandemic routes for daily walks. For at least the previous month I had thought about photographing it each time I passed… but I didn’t do so. Most of the time I just didn’t bother, but the one previous time I did try there was an issue with the light. But finally the sign was in shade and I captured it. And it IS a good reminder to always look, especially if you are a photographer!

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, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Photograph, New York

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The Photograph, New York
A woman poses for a photograph as friends look on, Manhattan

The Photograph, New York. = © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman poses for a photograph as friends look on, Manhattan

For today’s photographer we are back to Manhattan, with a photograph from our recent end-of-December week in New York. I always go into street photographer mode (with essence of travel photographer sprinkled in, as well) when we visit there — which we get to do relatively frequently since two sons live in Brooklyn. The street wandering on this trip was a bit more of a challenge than usual, as we were there during a rather extreme bout of very cold weather that taxed this coastal Californian’s ability to stay warm. Our routine often became one of walking and photographing until we were too cold to continue, stopping in a warm place for coffee or food, and then heading out again.

I think I made this photograph in Soho, as we walked north from near the southern tip of Manhattan. I’m pretty certain that the lighting on these group first caught my attention. (This was the trip on which I finally realized that the light in Manhattan is as interesting as that almost anywhere else, including a lot of places that are otherwise not at all like New York City.) The arrangement of the members of the group also caught my attention — the one woman (the subject of the photograph they are making) standing apart and with her back to me and being hit by the light just a bit, the fellow with the camera trained on her, a woman seated next to him looking on closely, and the woman apart on the left and in darker clothes, who is smoking and doesn’t seem all that involved. The light shines obliquely across the scene from the left, catching both the people and the scene in front of the building.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Looking In

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Looking In - Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.
Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.

Looking In. San Francisco, California. August 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.

Apologies for this title, but I did not get the name of the building (perhaps today I’ll do that), “A group of people looking into a courtyard with one guy looking the other way” seemed a bit too long, and I ran out of creativity before posting. I suppose there is the potential here for incorporating some quip about San Francisco “summer” weather as well – on this lovely “summer” afternoon there were high clouds and fog and it was trying to rain! :-)

I had another afternoon to kill wandering around San Francisco yesterday afternoon. My general target was something like street photography, though it also incorporated this little project I have to photograph downtown buildings from odd angles and render the images in black and white. I had been working on the latter and was heading back to where I would have dinner (and running a few minutes late) when I saw this little cluster of people crowded around what looked like the entrance to this glassed in courtyard filled with palm trees and some tables. Any sort of odd little scene like this – quite different from the general rush of people in the downtown area – catches my eye and often seems like it might make a photograph. Here I had the group of people crowded together to work with, along with the classical architecture of the building and courtyard. So I did what I often might do with such a scene: I stopped and quickly made one initial photograph so as not to miss it entirely, and then I remained and watched for something interesting or out-of-place to occur. When the fellow at the right separated himself from the larger group, my first reaction was a bit of frustration that he had broken up the group of people facing away, but in the end he makes the photograph more interesting to me than it would have been otherwise.

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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