Tag Archives: open

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street, Tongue in Cheek

Now Open

July 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An abandoned toilet stands next to a Chase Bank “Now Open” sign in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

Sometimes the world just hands you things that you couldn’t come up with on your own if you tried.

The opportunities for bad puns are so tempting here, but I’ll struggle to resist, and instead simply offer a few words about the location and the, uh, scene. On this summer day I was wandering around San Francisco to do street photography, and walked up Grant Street. Grant is such a tourist place that I often instead head off to some nearby streets that are a bit less geared to the tourist trade, so I picked up a cross street and wandered up toward Stockton Street. At one point as I walked past a busy area of markets and other small businesses I happened to notice this odd (and perhaps unfortunate, if you are the bank) juxtaposition of sidewalk “decorations.”

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: Yosemite

Tenaya Lake, January 2012

March 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.

I have been meaning to post this photograph since I made it last month, on January 16, 2012. The serious California drought (or so it seems) of 2012 created very unusual conditions in the Sierra this winter. The Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) through Yosemite National Park usually closes by some time in November, and has been known to close as early as October. The early season this year made it appear that we might have a normal or even heavier than normal winter – early storms near the beginning of October brought a lot of snow to the range and temporarily closed the road more than once. But by December it became clear that this was not going to be a normal year at all, and by the end of the month there was almost no snow anywhere in the range.

A week before this visit I had crossed and re-crossed the pass on a trip to Death Valley. While I appreciated the convenience and shorter drive, I found the odd conditions unnerving. Aside from a few patches here and there, I saw no snow at all, though the seasonal cold had frozen the high country lakes. A week later it looked like a storm or two might finally arrive, so we decided to make the trip up to the Tuolumne area to see the high country in a state that we probably (hopefully!) won’t see again. During the week before this visit, local news stations around California had made this story well known, and they almost all mentioned that people were visiting Tenaya Lake. And, indeed, there were tons of people at the lake when we arrived. There were about as many cars as you might see on an August afternoon. People were clustered along the frozen edge of the lake, were walking along its borders, even setting up tables for picnics on the ice. A few people thought to bring ice skates and they were skating great distances. (Fortunately for us, most people went no farther than Tenaya, and the crowds decreased rapidly after that point.)

Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Simplicity

January 18, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small appliance store front window with many colorful signs, San Jose, California.

This is another in the “walked out my front door and made photographs” series, being a store front that is within a half mile or so of my home. I’m a bit of a fan of photographing the fronts of these small businesses that appear to be anything but chain operations. Each one is its own unique universe and, I assume, reflects the owner’s personality in many ways including the cumulative effect of focusing on one small area of the world for many decades. I often wonder what it must be like to live in a world of vacuum cleaners for more than five decades – and I don’t mean to imply anything by that question beyond a serious interest in how our primary interests end up influencing how we experience and see the world.

The visual quality of these places also interests me. I can initially simply be overwhelmed by the details that must have accumulated over time – the many brightly colored signs, a few things hung on walls, displays of specialized equipment and materials with brand names I barely recognize. Yet there is a very carefully created order in all of this. It is fun – for me at least! – to spend some time looking at these scenes and starting to pick out the small details that I might not initially notice. (Of course, that is easier with a big print than it is with this little jpg!)

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Big Star Grocery Co.

September 1, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning shopping for produce at the Big Star Grocery Co. in Chinatown, San Francisco, California.

In the past I’ve mostly walked past these markets in San Francisco’s Chinatown at more typical tourist times of the day, so I had missed the activity of the early morning hours when the markets are both opening and taking shipments of produce, dropped off on the sidewalks by large delivery trucks and then moved inside manually.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: open

Now Open

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Tenaya Lake, January 2012

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Simplicity

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Big Star Grocery Co.

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