Tag Archives: san francisco

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

June 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Gate Bridge Cables silhouetted against hazy morning light on San Francisco Bay and city skyline

Back in March I took a day to go up into Marin County to do some early spring photography, thinking about the possibility of shooting in the redwood forest at Muir Woods – which was, in fact, where I ended up. I left well before dawn, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge right about the time the sun was coming up. Being a big fan of shooting in atmospheric haze of all sorts, the very thin layer of fog spreading across the entrance to the bay was enough to make me pull over and make a few photographs of the bay and the city.

This was an unusual sort of fog. We are more familiar with the banks of thick fog coming in off of the Pacific and flowing in through the Golden Gate, covering the bridge and rising over the shoulders or even the summits of the hills, often with a fairly sharp boundary between fog and clear air. This fog, however, was thin and more widespread and did not form the familiar “bank.” It was closer to translucent than to opaque, and the outline of the downtown San Francisco skyline was visible, though all details were muted. The identity of the foreground structure probably needs no explanation!

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: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

June 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Vertical format black and white photograph of light streaming through the upper reaches of the turret skylight above the atrium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

This is a second photograph made during a recent visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, on the weekend before the place closed for two years of renovation and expansion work. Only days before did I realize that it was about to close and the extraordinary length of the closure, and I quickly adjusted my plans to get up there one more time. I wanted to wander the facility itself, but I especially wanted to see the excellent exhibit of the work of photographer Garry Winogrand.

This skylight is a dominant feature when the museum exterior is viewed from the west, where its tilted and round shape stands out from almost anything else nearby. Inside the building it creates a wonderful space full of light that somehow seems intimate, even though it is the highest point in a very large lobby atrium. The small diameter of the space and the walkway that splits it in two probably contribute to this effect. This photograph is a highly interpreted or stylized view of the subject, and is the result of a great deal of work in post-production – which almost seems somewhat ironic since the photograph was made handheld with a very small rangefinder style mirrorless digital camera.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

June 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Midday light inside beneath the skylight in the atrium of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

For the time being I’m not going to write all that I could write about this photograph – that would be far too much to post here. Nonetheless, this might be a slightly longer “photo post” than usual.

The subject is the skylight in the turret at the top of the atrium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Just below the skylight there is a catwalk that crosses from one side of the cylindrical upper area of the atrium to the other, and this is a place of magical light in almost any conditions. I visited this past Friday since the museum closes after today (June 2, 2013) for two years for renovation and expansion, and I wanted to have one last chance to wander around in the museum and I wanted to see the wonderful Garry Winogrand exhibit.

During the “wandering” part of my visit I went to this catwalk and thought about how I could photograph it. It is almost embarrassing to photograph in this spot, since it is one of the most obvious iconic places to grab an iPhone shot, and many other visitors were doing just that. I first made a few symmetrical photographs looking up at the skylight in a more direct way and then thought that I’d try a few “off kilter” shots, perhaps with the Winogrand images – which often tilt and twist in surprising ways – still in my mind. Having also just spent time in the museum’s wonderful exhibit of classic black and white work by other photographers, I was in a bit of a black and white state of mind, and I was pretty certain that this would end up as a monochrome image.

(For those who wonder about such things, this photograph was made with the small Fujifilm X-E1 camera and the wonderful Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 lens.)

Photographs: Northern California

Pier at China Camp

June 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The old fishing pier at China Camp, California

This is another photograph from my first visit to the China Camp site along the northern San Francisco Bay, a place I had thought about visiting and photographing for several years. It was a Chinese immigrant settlement in the 1800s and apparently there was a thriving shrimp harvesting operation there. Today it is essentially ghost town, though one that has been stabilized and fixed up and which incorporates some “interpretive” facilities. I ended up there in conjunction with a “long-exposure photo walk” weekend that photographed a number of Bay Area locations over the course of three days. Though I did not participate in the entire event, I did join up with them on one morning to photograph dawn at the Golden Gate and then to travel up to China Camp.

This pier was the subject of several of my photographs on this day. It is an interesting and compelling subject in a bunch of ways. Its historical context of course makes it interesting, but there are several interesting visual aspects to it, too, and the overall feelings are of quiet and space and perhaps a bit of desolation. The pier itself is unlike most that I’ve seen. Power poles with utility lines run along its length. Ladders descend to the waterline for entry into small boats. Birds sit on top of high points along the pier. The water in the China Camp lagoon is almost completely still, and there is a great expanse of open water beyond with only low hills on the far horizon. (This quality reminded me just a bit of some views of Mono Lake.) For this photograph I used a 9-stop neutral density filter so that I could extend the exposure to last many seconds, further smoothing the surface of the water. I made about a half-dozen exposures, trying to get on in which the darned birds would hold relatively still for 5-10 seconds… and they finally cooperated on the last shot.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: san francisco

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

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Pier at China Camp

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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.