Tag Archives: metal

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

Man Talking on Cell Phone

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Man Talking on Cell Phone
Man Talking on Cell Phone

Man Talking on Cell Phone. San Francisco, California. July 14, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Man sitting on a bench in front of a San Francisco building and talking on his cell phone.

The first time I worked on this photograph, I made a decision to work it up as a black and white image. However, when I returned to it a month or so ago, I felt like it might be interesting as a color photograph as well.

There is nothing all that special about the location itself – it is on a small street in an area that might be thought of as along the edges of downtown San Francisco. It is not too far to typical large downtown buildings, but here it seems that many might residences and rental units, and many on this street are connected with the Academy of Arts College (or is it “university” now?) facilities that are spread all around the city. I’m intrigued by the interesting shapes and colors and textures of these San Francisco buildings, that often embody some strange combination of a great deal of order (carefully painted rectangular white window frames), utility (the fire escape being almost the most prominent thing on the front of the building), and little oddities (the benches on a slanting sidewalk and guy talking obliviously on his cell phone).

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

Windows, MOMA

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Windows, MOMA
Windows, MOMA

Windows, MOMA. New York, New York. August 18, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A scene consisting almost entirely of windows and secondary reflected subjects, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Look closely and you’ll perhaps see that this is not quite what it might first appear to be. It is something of a visual trick or joke on one level. It is some other things, too.

The bottom line is that almost nothing in this scene is actually where it appears to be or even what it appears to be. The shot was made through an upstairs window of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the vertical shapes are the window frame and a bit of the interior wall at the far right, with some diagonal elements of the frame at top and bottom. But the “scene” outside is entirely reflected in the windows of the adjacent building – this is actually a photograph of a single glass-walled building, not exactly a photograph of an urban scene with buildings and trees and sidewalks and people – those are all reflections in the glass of the building. Obviously, I was also having some fun with perspective lines going off in a range of different directions – the window frame lines converging to the right, the outside perspective lines converging toward the left, and the converging lines on the reflected buildings headed back to the right. There’s more, but I’ll probably get lost if I try to describe it. A close inspection – easier with the print than in this little jpg – reveals some other odd stuff here and there: double images of some of the reflected buildings, some warping and bending of those shapes, people scattered around the courtyard and some moving figures that are barely visible.

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

Yellow Buildings, Fence, and Night Sky

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Yellow Buildings, Fence, and Night Sky
Yellow Buildings, Fence, and Night Sky

Yellow Buildings, Fence, and Night Sky. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of abandoned industrial buildings from the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

The building on the left is sometimes known as the “UFO Building” – not because of anything that might be stored inside, but because of a shadow in the shape of a “flying saucer” that forms on one of its walls. I thought it was the only one until I took this photo in which you might spot another saucer-shaped shadow on the wall of the building at the right.

This scene is not a particularly unusual one at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, a place that is full of old industrial buildings left over from the long ship-building history on this island. Many of the old buildings are now in a state of somewhat arrested development, but they certainly show the signs of age and lack of care – lots of boarded up buildings, peeling paint, warnings about hazards of various kinds, and so forth.

Most of the light in this photograph comes from a bank of strong security lights on the exterior of a more modern nearby building, and the yellow color is a result of the type of lighting that is used. There is also a bit of full moon light in the shadows and on the bit of cloud at the upper right, and this also explains the lighter coloration of the sky. When making night photographs in a place like this, I feel comfortable about not really trying to “capture” an objective reality of the place. To be blunt, that is pretty much impossible. First of all, it is actually so dark in many of these places that it takes a while for your eyes to get used to it. Secondly, there are so many varied light sources with so many different colorations that it is essentially impossible to “color correct” the scene – though I’m not even quite certain what it would mean to do that in a scene that we really can’t “see” with our own eyes.

The idea in my night photography is not often to capture the scene as it “is,” but instead to reflect the way “the camera sees,” a way of seeing that is quite different from our native modes of seeing. Things that occur over long periods of time (exposures measured in minutes) appear in a single frame, sometimes objects lose their definition as shadows move and wind blows, stars create streaks in the sky and passing clouds blur, and the colors are far from “natural.”

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

Wooden Building and Stairs in Moonlight

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Wooden Building and Stairs in Moonlight
Wooden Building and Stairs in Moonlight

Wooden Building and Stairs in Moonlight. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The light of the full moon illuminates the facade of a wooden building, and outside stairway, and passing overhead fog clouds at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Since I was out doing night photography this weekend, I’m going to use this as an excuse to insert a night image into the recent stream of Death Valley photographs. (There are more of those, but a bit of variety can’t hurt.) I got an email from Tim Baskerville, the guiding light (guiding dark?) of The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. Tim has introduced and guided many new night photographers over the past few decades, and The Nocturnes group is a sort of loose collective linking together lots of night photographers and providing instruction, online resources, and shows of night photography work. As this is the 20th year for the group, lots of special activities are taking place and this little spontaneous get-together at Mare Island was one of them.

A small story from this weekend’s shoot may illustrate the widespread effect of Tim’s work with night photography in general and with the Mare Island location specifically. Those of us who were to meet Tim at Mare Island arrived to find other photographers already assembled at the indicated meeting place – but we didn’t really recognize most of the group. It turns out that another night photography group (loosely organized, as I understand it, by Thomas Hawk and Ivan Makarov) was going to be there as well. We spoke with them a bit and then they departed for the far end of the island. (They returned later and we worked side by side.) But then, a few minutes later, more vehicles began to show up and we thought that they might be the rest of our group, especially when someone asked “Are you the Nocturnes?” But no, this was a third night photography group, this one out of Sacramento!

In any case, as the light diminished and night came on we started shooting. We had a nearly full moon, which can be a wonderful asset, not so much as a subject (it is very difficult to include the full moon in night shots) but for the beautiful light is sheds on other subjects that might otherwise be very dark. On top of that, we had a combination of some high clouds (which are relatively stationary) and low fog (which creates a nice luminous glow as it quickly passes). I decided to begin the evening’s work by photographing this wooden-sided building and its outside staircase, illuminated by the moonlight, and with a bit of the cloudy sky and faint star trails.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | 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.