Tag Archives: stree

Now Open

San Francisco Photograph - An abandoned toilet stands next to a Chase Bank "Now Open" sign in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.
An abandoned toilet stands next to a Chase Bank “Now Open” sign in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

Now Open. San Francisco, California. July 15 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An abandoned toilet stands next to a Chase Bank “Now Open” sign in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

Sometimes the world just hands you things that you couldn’t come up with on your own if you tried.

The opportunities for bad puns are so tempting here, but I’ll struggle to resist, and instead simply offer a few words about the location and the, uh, scene. On this summer day I was wandering around San Francisco to do street photography, and walked up Grant Street. Grant is such a tourist place that I often instead head off to some nearby streets that are a bit less geared to the tourist trade, so I picked up a cross street and wandered up toward Stockton Street. At one point as I walked past a busy area of markets and other small businesses I happened to notice this odd (and perhaps unfortunate, if you are the bank) juxtaposition of sidewalk “decorations.”

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.

Sidewalk, Brick Building, Hotel Sign

Sidewalk, Brick Building, Hotel Sign
Sidewalk, Brick Building, Hotel Sign

Sidewalk, Brick Building, Hotel Sign. San Francisco, California. July 14,2010. © Copyright 2010 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of a street scene in San Francisco containing slanting sidewalk, brick and other buildings, and a hotel sign.

The geometric forms of this scene caught my attention as I walked up a street where many art students seem to hang out. The image is obviously full of all sorts of tall rectangles of varying sizes and colors, ranging from the small windows to the white column of the far building in the center to the bulky and dark form of the brick building on the right side of the frame. A couple of little elements also intrigued me: the juxtaposition of the parking meter and surrounding shadows and fire valves on the wall, and the parallel and slightly diagonal lines of the curb and the streetcar wires overhead.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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