New Louie’s Inc, Evening. San Francisco, California. July 27, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening scene as markets close in San Francisco

This photograph comes from another evening spent doing street photography in the late afternoon and on into the night in downtown San Francisco. The plan was to meet up with a small group of like-minded photographers who like urban subjects and the magic of the city at night. The other arrived before I did, and we finally caught up with one another on a street in a non-tourist area of the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

This street has fascinated me for a long time. Most often I’ve passed through in the morning, when produce trucks line the streets, and the sidewalks are crowded with people doing their shopping. At those times I often feel like a bit of an outsider, interjecting myself into a community that is not my own, but I’m attracted to many things about it and I return frequently. On this evening visit the neighborhood had a very different feeling. There were far fewer people out and about, and the shops that are so busy in the morning were now closing down one by one. Tables of merchandise were cleared and put away, sidewalks swept, shutters rolled down, and one by one the shops closed. Now, without the crowd of people, a different visual quality appeared, with the primary elements being the colors of the shops, signs and awnings, and the shapes of and relationships among the scattered tables, bins, and shelves.

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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