Tag Archives: stairs

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Garden Steps

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Garden Steps
Steps follow a curving path down an incline at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Garden Steps. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Steps follow a curving path down an incline at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Although it seems odd to me now, this is one of those photographs that I “left behind” at the time I made it. I no longer recall whether that was a matter of becoming distracted by something else or possibly I wasn’t able to see it correctly at the time. I only came across it again recently while doing my shelter-in-place review of my archives of older raw files. I had actually forgotten about the photograph — or, more accurately, a small series of photographs I made of this subject.

The specific location hardly matters, but it is in the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon. My recollection is that as we walked through this part of the garden and descended these steps I paused very briefly to make a few handheld exposures. There were other photographs from that day that seemed took my attention, and I apparently had too little left for this. But when I came upon it last week, it suddenly seemed like it would work in black and white.

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 and Amazon.

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

Open Door and Stairway, Night

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Open Door and Stairway, Night
“Open Door and Stairway, Night” — The entrance to someone’s Chinatown home, San Francisco.

Originally I contemplated adding this to the “Postcards From Pandemic” series — the mood and subject seem about right. In the end I did not, since I’ve decided that those photographs will all be made during the lock-down and whatever follows. This photograph is almost five years old.

There is, for me, a lot to ponder in this photograph. Let’s start with the obvious — it is not a pretty picture. Despite the fact that the scene is so gritty, I was attracted by the colors, textures, and all that stuff, apart from the underlying reality of the scene. But, obviously, we have to ask some questions about a scene like this: Who lives here? What must it be like to enter your home through such a portal?

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Climbing The Stairs

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Climbing The Stairs
A woman slowly climbs stairs near the entrance to a tunnel, San Francisco

Climbing The Stairs. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman slowly climbs stairs near the entrance to a tunnel, San Francisco.

The last time I took one of my quick trips to San Francisco to do street photography was months ago, and I’ve been planning recently to get back up there. Yesterday I finally found time. My photographic ritual there is pretty straightforward: I get up very early and catch a train up the Peninsula, typically arriving by about 7:00am. I travel light, with only the gear that will fit in a very small shoulder bag that doesn’t really look like camera gear. I walk, and this time I wandered close to eight miles over the course of about four hours, traveling through some areas that are run down in interesting ways, through the center of the financial district, and into the Columbus and Grant and Stockton streets areaI.

I enjoy street photography for several reasons. To be honest, as much as I love the natural world, I also love cities, and even more I love wandering through them on foot. Photographically-speaking, they provide a rich lab environment for finding compositions, color, people, and more. Street photography is usually be done unencumbered by the bulky gear I often use for landscapes, and I love the spontaneous aspects of it. This photograph embodies a number of things that I look for when photographing street. I’m always attracted by color and patterns and light — and this scene just inside the end of a tunnel is full of all of these things.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: France, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Travel

Stairs, Le Centre Pompidou

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Stairs, Le Centre Pompidou
Outside stairs at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris

Stairs, Le Centre Pompidou. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Outside stairs at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris

We had previously walked past the Pompidou Center museum but had not stopped, instead visiting other museums on our list. The structure is famous (or infamous, depending on your aesthetics) for its unusual architecture, which exposes lots of things that would usually be hidden beneath the skin of a more traditional building — ventilation ducts, stairs, escalators, structural reinforcements, and more. While the art inside the building was fascinating, the photographer in me was attracted to the structure itself.

I made this photograph from the ground level before we went inside. The simple “x” shape is superimposed on some of those exposed structural details, in this case a bunch of outside stairways. The color scheme of the building in this area is almost purely monochromatic — at first I thought I was looking at a black and white image, until I noticed a bit of yellow color along a margin. Since it was already monochromatic I decided to eliminate even that bit of color and go with a black and white rendition.

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