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Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Break Time, Savoy Hill

December 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hotel workers taking a cigarette break in the alley, Savoy Hill, City of Westminster, London

Very near this little alley is a large and famous hotel. We come up to this spot from the back way, so we did not see the typical hustle and bustle of the hotel entrance, instead just looking up a very nearly deserted side street to see a few employees on break, apparently having a smoke, We walked into this area and discovered a beautiful church hidden away on a corner to the right and out of the frame. After stopping to visit there, we continued our wandering and soon crossed in front of the hotel where these folks apparently work.

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

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

June 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Vertical format black and white photograph of light streaming through the upper reaches of the turret skylight above the atrium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

This is a second photograph made during a recent visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, on the weekend before the place closed for two years of renovation and expansion work. Only days before did I realize that it was about to close and the extraordinary length of the closure, and I quickly adjusted my plans to get up there one more time. I wanted to wander the facility itself, but I especially wanted to see the excellent exhibit of the work of photographer Garry Winogrand.

This skylight is a dominant feature when the museum exterior is viewed from the west, where its tilted and round shape stands out from almost anything else nearby. Inside the building it creates a wonderful space full of light that somehow seems intimate, even though it is the highest point in a very large lobby atrium. The small diameter of the space and the walkway that splits it in two probably contribute to this effect. This photograph is a highly interpreted or stylized view of the subject, and is the result of a great deal of work in post-production – which almost seems somewhat ironic since the photograph was made handheld with a very small rangefinder style mirrorless digital camera.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

June 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Midday light inside beneath the skylight in the atrium of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

For the time being I’m not going to write all that I could write about this photograph – that would be far too much to post here. Nonetheless, this might be a slightly longer “photo post” than usual.

The subject is the skylight in the turret at the top of the atrium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Just below the skylight there is a catwalk that crosses from one side of the cylindrical upper area of the atrium to the other, and this is a place of magical light in almost any conditions. I visited this past Friday since the museum closes after today (June 2, 2013) for two years for renovation and expansion, and I wanted to have one last chance to wander around in the museum and I wanted to see the wonderful Garry Winogrand exhibit.

During the “wandering” part of my visit I went to this catwalk and thought about how I could photograph it. It is almost embarrassing to photograph in this spot, since it is one of the most obvious iconic places to grab an iPhone shot, and many other visitors were doing just that. I first made a few symmetrical photographs looking up at the skylight in a more direct way and then thought that I’d try a few “off kilter” shots, perhaps with the Winogrand images – which often tilt and twist in surprising ways – still in my mind. Having also just spent time in the museum’s wonderful exhibit of classic black and white work by other photographers, I was in a bit of a black and white state of mind, and I was pretty certain that this would end up as a monochrome image.

(For those who wonder about such things, this photograph was made with the small Fujifilm X-E1 camera and the wonderful Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 lens.)

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

Construction Site, Cyclone Fence

May 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A of new building under construction in the Mission Bay are of San Francisco, as seen through a cyclone fence.

Just across McCovey Cove from San Francisco’s AT&T Park is an area where a lot of construction is currently occurring. The area is visually interesting right now partly because of the juxtapositions of really old and run-down stuff, some of the typical empty urban areas filled with parking lots and other temporary facilities, and a lot of change as new buildings go up. On this morning I walked into an area that not all that long ago had an abandoned feeling during the morning hours – and how it was buzzing with activity. Huge steel pilings stretch toward the sky, construction zones are fenced off, and hundreds of workers and lots of heavy equipment are busily at work. Yet even this is only a temporary state that will lead before long to yet another change once the buildings are complete, the construction workers go away, and new businesses and residents move in.

At this site I had first photographed the towering steel pilings. They created a feeling of a sort of odd, abstract monument as they pointed toward the sky. (A photograph of that will appear, or may already have appeared, here at the blog.) Then I walked up next to the fence surrounding the construction site and was impressed by the organized (I presume!) confusion and complexity of what was going on at ground level. Every inch of the site seemed to be occupied by something – rebar ready for concrete pouring, workers operating various pieces of large and small machinery, engineers and planners inspecting the work, the beginnings of towers and walls rising here and there. If anything in the urban landscape comes close to the level of complexity that may be found in the natural landscape, it just might be a place like this!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: of

Break Time, Savoy Hill

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

Construction Site, Cyclone Fence

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.