“Stairway, Bath” — A partially-enclosed stone stairway connects streets in Bath, England.
It is easy for travelers to get swept up in seeing all of “the important sights,” the things that all the guidebooks list as the “Top X Things To See” in every city, town, or village. In truth, there are things on those lists that you really should visit. But there is a ton of fascinating stuff to be discovered if you go out and… just walk, perhaps with no particular destination in mind. These “discoveries” often create more enduring memories than the icons, and they help you start to form a personal relationship with places.
“Half Submerged” — The salt playa of Death Valley partially submerged under the shallow waters of Manly Lake.
Part of what I love about this subject is how hard it is initially to understand exactly what we are looking at. (I wonder what you thought it was at first?) My first impression, at least when looking at small versions, is of sky and clouds. It is only when I look more closely that I realize that it is not that at all — it is the playa of Death Valley, where salt flats are partially submerged beneath the water of Lake Manly.
We usually direct our eyes parallel to the ground or perhaps upwards when we view the landscape. But on those occasions when we can look down at it from a distance we see it in a very different light. Features that are barely, if at all, visible from down below become the major points of interest. (There’s a lot more to see in this scene than first meets the eye.) And all of this is enhanced by the subjective feelings that come with looking out from any very high vantage point.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
Partially closed security shutters in front of a San Francisco business
There are many things I enjoy about doing street photograph, and several of them have to do with the fast-moving and spontaneous nature of the pursuit. The urban environment, at least once you start seeing its possibilities, can be an almost overwhelmingly rich source of potential subjects, to that point that I often have to make a subconscious choice to deal with only a subset of them at any given moment. For a while I may focus on color, then I may engage with human subjects, then it might be effects of light, or balances of shapes and mass, or tiny details, or…
As we turned down this block between Stockton and Grant during an evening of night street photography in San Francisco, for some reason I made one of these gear changes. Moments before I had been photographing people and the fronts of shops that were closing up for the day — but as I walked down this street I forgot about all of that and instead photographed mostly small details such as the accordion pattern of this security panel over a window.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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