Tag Archives: reflections

Photographs: France, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Cafe Le Chinon, Night

September 7, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening lights reflect on cobblestone street at the Cafe Le Chinon in Montmartre, Paris

Readers will have to give me a bit of slack for continuing to remark about things in Paris that are likely more obvious and mundane to people who know the city better than I. However, this was — believe it or not! — our first visit, so many things were new to us. Among the new (and wonderful!) things were the many cafes, with tables spilling out onto the sidewalks.

We stayed in a hotel in Montmartre, at the recommendation of our oldest son and our daughter-in-law, who had stayed in the area when they visited not long ago. Other than that, we didn’t know all that much about the area, besides some vague knowledge that it is sort of “artsy” (by long tradition) and that the famous Moulin Rouge is located nearby on a slightly seedy street. By the time I made this photograph we had been in Paris for some time, and we had learned to love the idea of wandering out late at night to pick a restaurant, and then to sit there slowly enjoying a meal, wine, and then coffee as the world walks by.

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

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

Patio, Reflections

June 3, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the window of an outdoor patio area at SFMOMA

This is (yet another!) photograph from our pre-opening visit to the newly updated and expanded SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The museum has been closed for something like two years while major construction was ongoing, and many have been waiting with a sense of expectation for the reopening, which took place in mid-May of this year.

It was a beautifully gray and wet day in San Francisco, with soft and gentle light. Several times I went outside onto the various patios and balconies that open from the museum to the surrounding urban San Francisco landscape, and the artificial structure produced by the expanses of reflecting glass became a subject. The extend and amplify open and lighted spaces, and make them seem to appear where big and solid building structures actually exist.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Reflections, Shadows, Bridge, and Sky

November 11, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Industrial buildings covered with shadows and reflections, clouds moving across the night sky.

On my recent nighttime visit to the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, where I again made night photographs with a group of like-minded photographers, I decided to forego some of the more familiar subjects and instead poke around in some dark corners of the place. I began by spending nearly an hour photograph an odd little area of concrete structures at the base of a long stairway, and once I finished there it only seemed right to walk up those stairs and find out where they led. This took me to what seemed like an old parking area behind some abandoned buildings — though it is sometimes hard to tell in the inky darkness. I could tell that there was a lot of debris in this lot, so I stepped around it carefully as I explored this blocky building that was painted by light and shadow from its surroundings in interesting ways.

Much of this light was virtually invisible to me, but it is a combination of light from close and far artificial light sources, the shadows of trees and other structures, and the well-defined shapes of windows through which more distant light shines. Overhead there is a covered walkway between larger buildings, and the darker form of one of them is visible at the lower left. Clouds were moving across the sky, and their shapes blurred during the long exposure.

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

Urban Reflections

August 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflected image of lights in San Francisco’s Chinatown

This photograph comes from a late-July evening spent doing night street photography in San Francisco, this time working the area between North Beach and Union Square… which of course means largely the Chinatown district. We began photography at dusk a few streets up from the touristy main drag, walking along Stockton street as the last shops closed up for the day. From here we wandered down narrow streets to the main drag, Grant, arriving there as darkness came on.

Even though it was a Friday night during the height of tourist season, there were not all that many people here, at least by the sometimes extraordinarily crowded standards of this area. Some shops were still open — catering to the out-of-town visitors — but many had closed or were closing. Nonetheless, the street held a wild variety of bright lights. At several points I forced myself to take a break from the “normal” street photography stuff and try to look at things in different ways. Here I had decided to look at light reflected in other objects, in this case a parked car.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: reflections

Cafe Le Chinon, Night

Patio, Reflections

Reflections, Shadows, Bridge, and Sky

Urban Reflections

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