Tag Archives: steps

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

Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown

May 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Laundry is hung to dry on fire escape above the streets of Chinatown, San Francisco.

This is a photography from one of my early morning photo-walks in San Francisco last summer. I take the train to the City very early in the morning and then walk. A lot. On this morning I passed through Chinatown on my way to the North Beach area fairly early in the morning – well before the tourist crowds showed up. A few blocks from the main tourist area it is a different world with markets opening up, deliveries being made, and busy people everywhere. I was working in more or less traditional street photographer style – to the extent that someone armed with a DSLR can do that ! – and shooting with just a 50mm prime lens on the camera and trying to work quickly as images presented themselves.

I imagine that many people who pass through here may easily be so focused on the activity at the street level that they might not look up. It often strikes me as surprising that in areas where so much is going on at street level – many people, colorful shop fronts, lots of action – the fronts of buildings right above present a completely different appearance. The first thing that caught my attention here was the laundry festooning the fire escape landings. But I also like the geometry of dark landings, ladders, and pipes against the lighter stucco wall, and the wonderful light coming through the morning haze from upper right and casting the lined shadows across the walls of the building.

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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: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Wooden Building and Stairs in Moonlight

April 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The light of the full moon illuminates the facade of a wooden building, and outside stairway, and passing overhead fog clouds at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Since I was out doing night photography this weekend, I’m going to use this as an excuse to insert a night image into the recent stream of Death Valley photographs. (There are more of those, but a bit of variety can’t hurt.) I got an email from Tim Baskerville, the guiding light (guiding dark?) of The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group. Tim has introduced and guided many new night photographers over the past few decades, and The Nocturnes group is a sort of loose collective linking together lots of night photographers and providing instruction, online resources, and shows of night photography work. As this is the 20th year for the group, lots of special activities are taking place and this little spontaneous get-together at Mare Island was one of them.

A small story from this weekend’s shoot may illustrate the widespread effect of Tim’s work with night photography in general and with the Mare Island location specifically. Those of us who were to meet Tim at Mare Island arrived to find other photographers already assembled at the indicated meeting place – but we didn’t really recognize most of the group. It turns out that another night photography group (loosely organized, as I understand it, by Thomas Hawk and Ivan Makarov) was going to be there as well. We spoke with them a bit and then they departed for the far end of the island. (They returned later and we worked side by side.) But then, a few minutes later, more vehicles began to show up and we thought that they might be the rest of our group, especially when someone asked “Are you the Nocturnes?” But no, this was a third night photography group, this one out of Sacramento!

In any case, as the light diminished and night came on we started shooting. We had a nearly full moon, which can be a wonderful asset, not so much as a subject (it is very difficult to include the full moon in night shots) but for the beautiful light is sheds on other subjects that might otherwise be very dark. On top of that, we had a combination of some high clouds (which are relatively stationary) and low fog (which creates a nice luminous glow as it quickly passes). I decided to begin the evening’s work by photographing this wooden-sided building and its outside staircase, illuminated by the moonlight, and with a bit of the cloudy sky and faint star trails.

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

Man on Bench with Cell Phone

July 27, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white photograph of a man sitting on a bench and talking on his cell phone in front of the shaded wall of an urban building in San Francisco.

I was wandering through this part of San Francisco, mostly but not only looking for architecture like that of this building, especially with the combination of dark shadows and the fire escape contrasting with the white trim and the bright areas lit by the slanting sunlight. When I saw this fellow happily engaged in his cell phone call, completely oblivious to everything going on in the place where he sits I had to make a photograph.

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

Building Exterior, Peter Macchiarini Steps

July 22, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Black and white photograph of weathered and dilapidated building exterior wall along the Peter Macciarini Steps, San Francisco.

This is another in a small series of photographs I made of the old, weathered buildings along these very steep sidewalk stairs in San Francisco. In this case I decided to go with black and white since it seems to me that the main interest in the image would be the shapes and forms rather than colors. (Though the color images has a certain appeal, too – the colors are very subtle and almost all in the “tan” range except for a bit of reddish brick, a couple of small colorful stickers on the wall, and the nearly gray concrete.)

I had seen other named stairways elsewhere in San Francisco, but was unaware that this one warranted a name. A web site with information on this and other stairways in SF points out that the city has a history of naming some of its ugliest streets and other features for famous people. This one, despite having a kind of gritty urban charm, seems to fit the mold.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
ISO 200, f/8, 1/640 second

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