Tag Archives: shades

Photographs: Croatia, Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Perpendicular

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Perpendicular
Blue wooden doors with former windows filled by painted wood panels.

Perpendicular. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Blue wooden doors with former windows filled by painted wood panels.

Many photographers are intrigued — obsessed, even — with the abstract qualities of shapes, form, color, and texture. Many of you already understand that these things are often as important as, if not more so, than the objective content of photographs. A photograph does record things, but it isn’t just recording “what we see” — it is also about recording, arranging, and presenting “how we see.” And many of use — almost all, really — see this other things when we use our cameras.

I made this photograph while walking through Trogir, Croatia one morning — I am pretty sure this was the morning when Franka Mlikota Gabler and I met there to photograph. This town can be very crowded later in the day, but in the early morning hours we had it almost to ourselves, and there was plenty of time to photograph things like this without distractions. What is the photograph “about?” Hard to say precisely, and you have a voice in this, too. But I was obviously fascinated by the perpendicular arrangement of lines and rectangles, the subtle difference in the blue tones, and the weathering and other imperfections in the surfaces.

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.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Southern California

Window Shades

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Window Shades
Window Shades

Window Shades. Getty Center, Los Angeles, California. March 28, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A walkway with window shades, Getty Center

I visit the Getty Center (perhaps once or so each year) as much to photograph the architecture as to see the art. The overall effect of the space, on the large and small levels, is stunning. It sits on top of a ridge with long views over the Los Angeles basin and out to see near Santa Monica. The Center sprawls along the top of the ridge, with many levels to the buildings and with an unusual garden below. The details are also fascinating — among other things, rectangular forms are reflected in almost all aspects of the design, yet there are things that are set off at odd angles from this regularity.

I made this photograph in a small interior area, more or less a sort of hallway and stairway with a walkway crossing in front of a wall of windows that are covered by translucent shades. As I looked at it I thought of it as a sort of cubist subject, and I found the colors (the various transparencies and the strips of muted blue sky beyond) and varying decrees of opacity/transparency very interesting.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.