Tag Archives: print

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pipe Covered Wall, Fire Extinguisher Sign

June 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A very worn and peeling wall with pipes, conduit, a fire extinguisher sign, and shadows – The Embarcadero, San Francisco.

This is a more or less random bit of wall in a small alley leading from the Embarcadero to some old buildings on one of the old piers along the east shoreline of San Francisco. (I need to get back up there soon. There was a recent fire in the area and now I’m wondering if it affected any of these little spots I photograph.)

I am a bit of a sucker – and who isn’t? – for old worn walls, especially when they are crisscrossed by pipes and conduit and when they hold various valves and meters of the sort that in more modern structures might be hidden from view. In this case, I made the photograph in relatively “harsh” light – it was still morning, but no longer the very early soft, warm light. In fact, it was that very light that created another element of this scene that attracted me, namely the very wide shadows from the very narrow pipes. I liked other small details too – the “FIRE EXT” sign, worn and now covered by conduit, with no fire extinguisher to be seen; what must be a much older “sign” about a third of the way in from the right, which now seems to be completely blank; that interesting interruption of the wall near its base but a chunk of steel covered with rivets.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seals in Surf

June 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

After over a month of not exposing a single frame, I needed to go out and start shooting again this past week. (June is often a very busy time of year for me, and this June was especially challenging in a number of ways.) So, even though it is finals week at the college and I have a lot of papers to grade and loose ends to tie up, I managed to get away for a half day to photograph at Point Reyes. I went there with few specific ideas about what to shoot, instead just sort of hanging loose, enjoying whatever I could find, and making photographs as I found them. I started by taking an unplanned detour out towards Tomales Point – I was sort of killing time while waiting for the light to do the right stuff, and I thought it would be interesting to head out there and see the tule elk. After that I returned to the main road and headed out toward the Point Reyes lighthouse.

It actually was not my plan to go to the lighthouse, and didn’t even drive the last little bit of roadway to that site. Instead I took the turn towards the start of the Chimney Rock trail, with a general plan of being high up on the bluffs of this southernmost section of the Point when the good light arrived. I pulled in, at a sandwich for dinner, loaded up my camera gear, and headed out along the trail. I had a few things in mind. I know that shooting back along the steep, rocky cliffs of the Point late in the day can be dramatic, and I started by photographing there – fortunately my timing turned out to be almost exactly right, as I caught a last bit of light on the mist and haze along the shoreline before the sun moved too far north to continue to light the area. I then moved on out the end of the trail, where I just sat for a while as I waited for the early evening color to come to the light. I made a few photographs out here, stopped again along the bluffs to photograph along the point (but the best light had passed), made a few photographs back across Drakes Bay, and then started back towards a low point, protected from the wind, from which I thought I might try to photograph the Farallons right at sunset. Once I got there, the light on the islands seemed uninteresting, but I soon realized that the guttural sounds of elephant seals that I had been hearing were coming from the base of the cliff on which I was standing. I moved a bit closer to the edge – but not too close! – and was able to shoot straight down on a group of elephant seals as they alternately lay around on the beach and sparred in the shallow surf just beyond the sand.

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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwoods and Big Leaf Maples, Gazos Creek

June 26, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Redwood and big leaf maple forest along Gazos Creek, California.

I recall that on this day I had gone out to photograph along the Pacific coastline between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, California, mostly without any specific plan. First I had gone to one of my favorite Highway 1 bluffs to photograph the birds that pass within a few feet of it as they coast along the coastal updrafts. Then I moved north along the coast and discovered a group of kite surfers at one of the beaches, so I stopped and photographed them for a while.

Continuing north I came to a turn off to one of the many small roads that head up into the mountains that lie between the shoreline and the urban areas around San Francisco Bay. I took it and found myself driving along this narrow and twisty road that followed the bottom of a valley holding a small creek. The bottom of the steep and narrow canyon was deeply shaded by thick forest, including some stands of second-growth redwoods. This photograph was made in a nameless section of the valley where there was a spot to pull over and photograph the soft light filtering down through the moss-covered trees.

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

Bus Stop, San Francisco

June 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.

I made this photograph a year ago during one of my summer walks through downtown San Francisco. These walks have become a sort of tradition for me during this time of the year – I take the train into The City, arriving very early, and then head out on foot to photograph various areas, most of which I’ve visited a number of times. I prowl for several different sorts of subjects – the early morning light above the waterfront, people, bits of color and shape, and “architectural landscapes.”

Things can evolve very quickly in this urban environment. As I recall, the first thing that caught my attention here was the solitary figure on the bench, obscured by the semi-transparent material around the bus stop shelter, followed by the juxtapositions of yellow colors on its room and the sign across the street. The scene was incredibly busy, with people walking between me that the shelter, cars and buses passing by on the street, and people moving in and out of the frame on the other side of the street. So here, as I often do in such situations, I used what I might call the “compose and wait” approach – I found a composition around the shelter that centered the far widow and red sign in the opening… and then I waited for something interesting to appear in the right parts of the frame and for the distracting elements to disappear. I made perhaps a half-dozen or more exposures. In one, a bus passes through the frame. In another, blurred people appear in the foreground. But in this one, the person in dark clothes walked right in front of the red sign as another person emerged across the street to the left of the shelter, and no other people or vehicles interfered.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: print

Pipe Covered Wall, Fire Extinguisher Sign

Elephant Seals in Surf

Redwoods and Big Leaf Maples, Gazos Creek

Bus Stop, San Francisco

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