Tag Archives: paint

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Detail, Steel Bridge

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Structural detail of the Steel Bridge, Portland, Oregon

Detail, Steel Bridge. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Structural detail of the Steel Bridge, Portland, Oregon

This might be the most unimaginatively named steel bridge in the United States — as far as I can tell it is actually called “Steel Bridge.” Which it is. The bridge crosses the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, where its double-deck structure (with a center section that can be raised) carries trains, cars, pedestrians, bicycles, and rapid transit across the water. When we visited we joined the pedestrians, which gave me a chance to look at the structure close up.

Old distressed and weathered structures like this intrigue me, and I know I’m not the only photographer who has this interest. Sometimes I imagine the contrast between some engineer crafting very careful and precise design drawings of the structure and its smaller elements, producing materials that reflect the conceptual perfection of such structures… and the real-world reality the creeps in over the long life of such structures. The latter is visible here in the multiple layers of paint, now marked by stain patterns and split open to reveal rust.

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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Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

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Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel

50. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel.

Photographs like this one have, at least for me, several purposes or rationales. To some extent, walking into a regular city environment and looking for little visual odds and ends is an important exercise in visual awareness. It is so easy to walk through such places and not pay a lot of attention, and when you do so while searching for images you see things that you’d otherwise miss. It is also interesting, I think, to “excerpt” small things from their larger context. (This bit of signage, is small enough that you might barely notice it if you took in the whole building at once.) With this one there is also a bit of that odd characteristic of some photographs, where their age — or the age of the subject — becomes somewhat interesting on its own.

So, what is it? It is a bit of a hand-painted street number sign on a very old (and somewhat iconic) building on a street in San Francisco that I often walk on these street photography visits. What else is it? It is color and form, abstracted to some extent from its original context. But not entirely abstracted, since if you look closely you might notice the extremely weathered and cracked paint and you might wonder about the history of this little bit of a sign, especially in an era when one-of-a-kind hand-painted signage is increasingly replaced by industrial signage.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Booklets

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Booklets
A portion of an old sign on the wall of a business

Booklets. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A portion of an old sign on the wall of a business.

From what I can tell, I’m not the only photographer who is occasionally distracted by subjects like this, nor the only photographer who photographs odd signs. I came across this one on a wall as I walked through an area of San Francisco. At this point, I suspect that the sign is largely forgotten — it was hidden behind a truck in an area along the fringe of a gas station.

There are several things that can be fun or interesting about these signs. For one, I’m intrigued by signs that are not associated with “name” businesses or products, but which are truly one-of-a-kind. Typically this means that they were built and/or painted by hand, and often some of the rough edges show. (Judging by the dark areas on the letters, I suspect that this wall was tagged, and someone painted the main wall but left the text of the sign “as is.”) The distressed quality of the wall is also interesting, with its peeling and fading paint. Finally, taken out of context like this, the letters of signs can become disembodied and divorced from their literal meaning… and they sometimes start to look rather odd.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Gated Community

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Gated Community
Doorways with metal security gates in a San Francisco neighborhood

Gated Community. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Doorways with metal security gates in a San Francisco neighborhood.

The title of the photograph is, obviously I hope, an ironic joke. This community relies on gates, but it is hardly the sort of place the comes to mind when we think of a “gated community,” an exclusive sort of place where “regular people” are perhaps not welcome. Here there are gates, too, but on individual doorways of residences and businesses, reflecting the reality of life in areas of inner cities.

The gates intrigue me — what lies behind them, and what is it like to live behind them? But the shapes and patterns produced by the gates, with their vertical texture, the colorful vertical row of painted tiles, and the larger wall surface that has clearly been painted over many times, most likely to cover up graffiti.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.