Sheet metal fence, roll-up door, trash, and hand-written message to the garbage man, Brooklyn
“Please close and lock this gage. Garbage man”
I know this will baffle a few readers… but there you go. I’m tempted to offer little explanation and let you make of it what you will. This small vignette comes from a semi-industrial area beneath a bridge in a section of Brooklyn, New York. Is that cryptic enough? ;-)
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. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
“Paint on Metal Wall” — Colorful patches of spray paint on a metal wall, Brooklyn, New York
While wandering around in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn, between a walk in one direction on the Brooklyn Bridge and a walk back in the other direction on the Manhattan Bridge, we walked up some streets under the flyover at the Brooklyn end of the Manhattan Bridge. This is not what you might think of as a “special” area, being beneath a bridge and containing at least some of the expected forms of urban decay. Surprisingly though there were some interesting things to see here – nice light on this day and some urban/street subjects.
As we walked up one narrow street we passed, as I recall it, some storage yards and similar that were fenced off from the roadway and sidewalks. I think this was part of a section of metal fencing along the sidewalk. I remember looking at this very bizarre pattern of colorful paint and wondering how it got there. There were no signs on the wall at this point, but it looked like someone must have spray-painted some objects in front of the wall, and done so more than once and with a wild variety of colors – blue, hot pink, fluorescent green, several shades of hello, orange, black, and more. This accidental art seems to be the result of the creation of something else that was nowhere to be found.
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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
Desert sunrise reflected on the surface of a metal trailer, Death Valley National Park
On my final day in Death Valley this past December I rose early to go re-photograph a location that I had shot much earlier in the week… and fouled up some exposures when I failed to pay attention to camera settings. Yes, it happens! I had a long homeward drive ahead of me on this day, but I knew that I had enough time to get back to this spot and make amends before leaving. Fortunately, the location in question was not terribly far from where I was camped, and instead of what can sometimes be a half hour, one, or longer drive to sunrise location… this time it was maybe 10 minutes. So I got to sleep in… until there was actually a tiny bit of light in the sky! I awoke, dressed in the tent, and went to my car to drive to my destination as the light was beginning to glow in the east.
As I left the campground I was already in “photographer mode,” but probably mostly so that I could anticipate what light conditions I might be working with a bit later – but I was focused enough to catch a quick glimpse of this interesting reflection on the side of a metal walled travel trailer along the route out of the campground. It may sound odd, but the shiny metal surfaces, the ambient blue pre-sunrise light, and the reflections of a few reddish clouds along the eastern skyline caught my attention. I stopped. I backed up. I opened the window of my car. I made a few photographs of the trailer, which most likely contained sleeping campers who would miss this lovely sunrise.
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. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
A street lamp and two windows on a building wall along a narrow street in Salzburg, Austria
I saw these interesting lamps on my first day walking around in Salzburg but didn’t think much more about them until later. They were attached to walls by what look like curved rods of iron, and were not like anything that I’m familiar with. Later, when visiting a location near but not in Salzburg, I saw the same lamps on other buildings. Now, seeing a pattern, I started looking for them, and they popped up in lots of different places in and around Salzburg.
This wall belongs to what I presume is a home or apartment along a narrow street not far from central Salzburg. In the afternoon we walked away from the busy old central city and headed toward a nearby area where we had parked, and as we did we passed through a number of these old, narrow streets. In places, the afternoon light was almost parallel to the streets, and here it glances across the rough surface of the wall, hitting one window and casting a shadow on the open upper window.
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. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
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.
