Tag Archives: street

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District

June 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Seattle Viaduct and the blue roof of a building, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

Yet another photograph from the early May photo walk I joined up with in the Fremont district of Seattle. A viaduct crosses the water high above this section of Seattle, and the structure more or less dominates portions of the view here. After shooting some of the buildings near where the photo walk began, I decided to head over towards this bridge and see what I could find to shoot there. I shot straight up at it from underneath, towards it from further away, along its length, and eventually made a few close-up photographs of details.

For this photograph I decided to create a more or less abstract juxtaposition of the underside of the bridge, almost straight overhead, and a bit of the underside of a building with a blue roof. Usually I might prefer to shoot such a thing from the tripod and perhaps even combine multiple exposures in post as a way of dealing with the wide dynamic range, but this time I simply composed the shot handheld and made a single exposure. Well, actually I made two slightly different versions, but still. :-)

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, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man Crossing Bridge

May 31, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man crossing a bridge in the China Basin area of San Francisco, California.

Two bridges crossing the inlet that passes AT&T Park (including “McCovey Cove”) are visible in this photograph. I’m not enough of a historian to have really researched these bridges, though I think that both are or were draw bridges and that at least the far one dates to the early twentieth-century. They are interesting anachronisms in areas that are now quite different from when the bridges were built – much of the surrounding area is not filled with new office and apartment/condominium buildings (one of which is barely seen along the waterfront at the far left) and often crowded with people attending San Francisco Giants games.

As I often do when photographing certain subjects, I began here by trying to create a composition that just included the structure of the bridge, especially with the pattern of the metal grate the forms the roadway here. Then I noticed that a pedestrian was approaching, so I thought I’d see if he might end up in interesting places within the composition. My original idea was to make the exposure before he reached the spot where his is located in this frame, but at the exact right moment a car crossed the bridge in front of him!

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brown Wall with Pipes and Worn Paper Figures, Fremont District

May 30, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Worn paper figures glued to a brown wall with pipes and conduit, Fremont District, Seattle Washington.

This was one of the first photographs I made on my early May visit to the Fremont district of Seattle with a group on a “Seattle Photowalk” between Fremont and the Gas Works Park. Although they were going to make an evening of it, I was only able to join them for about an hour – but it turned out to be a productive hour as I came back with nearly a dozen photographs that I like.

Once I got in the spirit of the place, I found the visual opportunities in Fremont to be quite interesting. There is a lot of the expected urban funkiness, with old buildings, small business crammed in odd corners, old structures, a waterfront, bridges overhead, and a few truly odd features such as the Lenin statue where the group met up. It is the sort of place I might initially look at and wonder what I’m going to shoot, only to discover ten minutes later that there almost more potential subjects than I know what to do with. This section of a brown wall was one of my first subjects. Initially the interesting pattern of crisscrossing conduit and pipes caught my attention, but when I looked closer I noticed the remnants of what might have been a small collection of paper figures glued to the wall.

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

Urban Spring

May 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring growth against a backdrop of downtown San Francisco buildings.

I was covering familiar ground through essentially the financial district area of downtown San Francisco while on an April walk through the city to shoot street and urban landscape subjects. This building is familiar to almost anyone in San Francisco, and perhaps to many who have seen photographs of the striking exterior that are often seen online. The difference this time was that the downtown trees, that are a rare nod to the natural world in this almost wholly constructed environment, were just beginning to leaf out with new spring greenery and providing a sort of ironic counterpoint to the hard, reflective, and angular surfaces of the architecture.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: street

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District

Man Crossing Bridge

Brown Wall with Pipes and Worn Paper Figures, Fremont District

Urban Spring

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.