Tag Archives: photowalk

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

Pipe and Wall, Fremont District

June 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A drainage pipe attached to an urban wall, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

This minimalist photograph shows something barely worthy of a photograph, by most standards – a plastic drainage pipe attached to a worn stucco wall up a small alley in the Fremont District of Seattle, Washington. There are, perhaps, a few visual puzzles to consider though. The perspective is oddly skewed for several reasons. First, my camera was angled upwards fairly steeply to shoot this wall as it was above the alley I was standing in, and the alley was heading down a slope. In addition, some of the visual cues about up, down, and sideways are a bit contradictory. First, the longer section of the pipe obviously cuts across the scene diagonally. But a close look at the upper section of the pipe shows that it is not quite vertical, with true vertical shown by the drip/seepage lines on the wall.

In any case, enough musing about the photograph. It is a drain pipe and a wall, and I don’t suppose that leaves room for a whole of additional description!

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

Weathered Wall, Covered Window and Can, Fremont District

June 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A can is stuck in the grate covering an alley window on a badly weathered and stained wall, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

This is also a photograph in the series I made during the hour that I had to shoot along with the Seattle Photowalk folks in early May, when they met up to photograph in the Fremont district of Seattle. I took a one-hour hour “mini-vacation” from the other business that had brought me to Seattle, grabbed a camera, and wandered about making photographs for sixty minutes.

Aside from some technical stuff (e.g. shooting handheld rather than with a tripod, perhaps shooting with just a prime or two rather than zooms, etc.), the secret is that I approach street photography in ways that are not all that different from how I approach nature or landscape photography. In both cases, I may photograph both the larger scene and smaller subjects contained within it. In both cases, I tend to “prowl” for images, even though I do begin with certain ideas of what I might look for and what I might find. Also in both, I think I begin by trying to find things that interest me first, and only then thinking about how to make photographs of them. Here I had seen a skinny little side alley. At first I didn’t see anything in it that was an obvious photographic subject, but for some reason I still wandered into in and just looked about. The first thing that I “saw” was the old wall with its odd patterns, perhaps the result of rain or of previous poorly-done paint jobs. The texture intrigued me, but I wasn’t seeing a photograph of that alone, so I kept looking. It didn’t take long to notice some things placed on or within the wall – some pipes (that’s another photograph) and this odd window, blocked with what looks like a piece of wood and with an old can jammed into the security grill. I made a few photographs and moved on.

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

Leaves and Red Metal Door

June 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Leaves grow against a red metal roll-up door in the Fremont District of Seattle, Washington.

In early May I was in the Seattle area of three days on non-photographic business, and fairly busy with those other affairs for much of time that I was there. However, when I happened to mention online that I was in that area, someone let me know that there was going to be a “Seattle Photowalk” the next evening. The plan was to meet in the Fremont area (“under the statue of Lenin” – it’s a long story…) and then wander about for the next four hours, ending up at the Gas Works Park at sunset. I couldn’t pry open a full four hours in my schedule, but I did manage to find one hour, so I made plans to meet the group.

I arrived at the appointed starting time and place and found a small group of photographers ready to go. After the obligatory group photo (indeed, beneath the statue of Lenin!) we split up and began to photograph. I think that I may have been in Fremont once before, perhaps a dozen or more years ago, since the general area seemed a bit familiar, but as far as photography went I had no specific ideas at all about what I would find. The area does have an interesting “worn” quality – at least the parts that aren’t trendy new corporate buildings – so I figured that I could probably find something. And having only one hour to photograph an area I’d not scouted, I knew that I’d better get to work! It only took me a few minutes – and this is typically true – to get into the “seeing” mode and start to find potential subjects. Shooting mostly with just a 50mm prime I wandered up side streets, alleys, and a few driveways, looking for odd bits of shape and color. This branch was growing across the sliding metal door on a small eating establishment that was apparently closed for the day.

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

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District

June 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Seattle Viaduct and the blue roof of a building, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

Yet another photograph from the early May photo walk I joined up with in the Fremont district of Seattle. A viaduct crosses the water high above this section of Seattle, and the structure more or less dominates portions of the view here. After shooting some of the buildings near where the photo walk began, I decided to head over towards this bridge and see what I could find to shoot there. I shot straight up at it from underneath, towards it from further away, along its length, and eventually made a few close-up photographs of details.

For this photograph I decided to create a more or less abstract juxtaposition of the underside of the bridge, almost straight overhead, and a bit of the underside of a building with a blue roof. Usually I might prefer to shoot such a thing from the tripod and perhaps even combine multiple exposures in post as a way of dealing with the wide dynamic range, but this time I simply composed the shot handheld and made a single exposure. Well, actually I made two slightly different versions, but still. :-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: photowalk

Pipe and Wall, Fremont District

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Weathered Wall, Covered Window and Can, Fremont District

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Leaves and Red Metal Door

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Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District

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

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