Tag Archives: stair

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

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Moonlit Stairs and Windows - Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.
Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

Moonlit Stairs and Windows. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

This month I have had the opportunity to return to the ongoing task for filing through older raw files to see what I missed the first time around. (The task also leads to deleting some files that I originally held on to.) For me this is an important ritual, as I often accidentally “leave behind” some photographs when I first review them – either I get to busy and move on before I fully explore them, or in some cases I simply don’t yet “see” the photograph when I look at it too soon after making it. I have a theory about the latter issue. Sometimes I think I’m so invested in what I hoped or thought the photograph would be that I fail to see what it really is, at least until I’ve waited a while.

The subject of this photograph is the exterior of a building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, a place that I have photographed only in the dark! I have worked with this building before. It is superficially a pretty uninteresting structure, but some of the unusual exterior stairways become interesting compositionally when illuminated by moonlight as in this photograph. I’ll share a few odd technical details about this one, too. The exposure time was nearly 8 minutes! And the capture was still underexposed. Since I cannot meter a scene like this, I often make my first exposure based on some sort of educated hunch – and I guess I just couldn’t imagine that I’d have to stand there any longer than this! Of course, because of the distance between the close-in railing and the far portions of the upper story, I had to use a small aperture of f/16. And being concerned about noise I shot at ISO 200. In the dark. Right. So one reason that I think I neglected to work with this file was that it seemed underexposed – OK, it was underexposed, even given the very dark subject of the scene. However, when I began to work with the raw file I discovered that I could push it the equivalent of several stops and the image would still hold good quality without obtrusive noise. I like the odd combination of shapes and angles, and in the end I think the very dark interpretation is actually the right one for this subject.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.

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

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House

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Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House - Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.
Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House. San Francisco, California. June 29, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

We are fortunate to have season tickets to San Francisco Opera. (No. Not box seats. Not even orchestra seats. But, still, the opera… :-) So we spend a fair amount of time in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco and wander around the place a bit before shows and during intermissions. I find the whole place architecturally interesting, and some day I would love to have an opportunity to go in there with all of the right gear and have free run of the place to make photographs.

But for now I have to make do. This particular entry and the stairwell beyond have intrigued me for a while. Long before I made this photograph I had made a few iPhone images of the scene and thought about what it contains and some of the reasons that it must attract me. Last summer we went to the San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring,” and due to the somewhat extreme length of the component operas, many of the performances started fairly early – this one started at 7:00 p.m., meaning that there was plenty of light coming in from the windows to the right of the scene. On this evening I had brought along a camera body and a single 50mm prime, which turned out to be just about the right lens for this scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Stairs, Person Walking

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Stairs, Person Walking
Stairs, Person Walking

Stairs, Person Walking. San Francisco, California. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A person walks past the bottom of a stairway along Stockton Street, San Francisco.

When I posted a color version of this photograph a week or so ago I mentioned that there was also a black and white version – and that I was up in the air about which I prefer. I’m still not certain, though I’m leaning more towards this monochrome version. While there are some aspects of the subtle colorations in the other version that I am hesitant to give up, I think that the angles and forms and masses of dark and light may be more the focus in this version.

Since I told the story on the original post I’ll keep it short here. I was in the Stockton Street area of Chinatown in the morning and had crossed the “bridge” at the termination of a dead end alley that sits above Stockton. There were two stairways down to the street level where Stockton emerges from a short tunnel. As I went down the stairs I thought that the angles and the light in the stairwell looked interesting as forms and was working out a composition or two when the figure walked through the frame and I reacted quickly to make a photo that is quite a bit different from what I was thinking of when I started.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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

Stairs, Person Walking

1 Comment
Stairs, Person Walking
Stairs, Person Walking

Stairs, Person Walking. San Francisco, California. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A person walks past the bottom of a stairway along Stockton Street, San Francisco.

On this mid-July morning I was walking through sections of downtown San Francisco, on my way from Market Street up through parts of Chinatown and heading toward North Beach. It was early enough that the bulk of the tourist crowd was still sleeping in or having breakfast, though people were out and about. My plan was to walk up the first block of the main tourist section of Chinatown to grab some storefront photographs, and then to head a bit west to Stockton Street or thereabouts, where things are oriented (much) less towards the tourist trade.

There is a place where there are essentially two layers of streets. Busy Stockton ducks into a tunnel and the street that is right above it ends on a short spur that is mostly parking. I walked to the middle of the sidewalk at the end of this little street, from which I could photograph straight up Stockton. Finishing that I looked for the stairs down to Stockton and happened to pick the one to my left. As I entered the stair well I looked for photographs since I like the angles and the lighting in some of these areas. One landing up I could look down to where the sidewalk coming up through the tunnel met up with the stairs and then emerged into the light beyond. I made an exposure or two of this “urban landscape,” and then as a person walked across the scene I had a moment to channel my “inner HCB” and photograph her blurred form.

Speaking of channeling HCB, there is also a BW version of this image that probably has more of the classic “street” look. At the moment, thinking that I’m in danger of trying to look old school if I go the other way and also enjoying the brown and tan and similar tones in the color version, I’m going with this one.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)