Broom handle leaning against walls meeting in a corner.
Yup. A broom handle. Leaning in a corner between two walls with interesting texture, and lit by soft light. It is one of those little things I see sometimes and just have to photograph.
We were visiting an art fair in Laguna Beach on this Thanksgiving Holiday. Often I just wander in such places with no particular goal and certainly not with photography in mind. But I had a small camera with me, and there it was… ;-)
What can I say? It is a broom handle! OK, maybe it isn’t just a broom handle. We briefly dropped in at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach while visiting Southern California over the Thanksgiving Holiday. This is a long-standing crafts fair that, as I understand it, is sort of a “big thing” in the area.
This photograph is a reminder that there is always something to see, especially if I happen to have a camera in my hands. It would have been easy to simply walk past this little vignette, except that carrying the camera gives me an incentive to look more closely at my surroundings. This little alcove was at the back of a booth — I think it may have been one where live ceramics demonstrations were taking place — and something about the colors, the alternating panels with their remnants of paint and clay dust, and the off-kilter broom handle caused me to stop and make a few exposures.
Light and shadow play across the surfaces of concrete structures, night
This is another of my “quiet” photographs from this nighttime visit to the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. Driving to the place this time I had decided that I wanted to spend some time not photographing the familiar subjects there. (Later that night I did photograph some of those, too.) I had some vague ideas in mind that involved textures and angles and effects of light, along with some other thoughts. As I drove into the area in the late afternoon I picked out a few likely spots to return to after dark.
The area of this photograph turned out be a productive one for me on this evening. I have always walked right past this building on previous visits, but one thing led to another and I ended up pausing there this time. The spot is a perfect example of how the mysterious light of night can transform a truly pedestrian subject into something interesting. This is the corner of a building and a short concrete pad that runs up against crude concrete walls that apparently hold a hillside at bay. But at night an overhead security light casts illumination straight down across the surface of the concrete wall, and produces a pool of light at its base. The nearer walls pick up subtle and colorful light from across the bay in the town of Vallejo.
“Stone Steps” — Stone steps in front of a San Francisco building
There was no particular plan that took me here this time — I was following a somewhat random route across The City, dictated by whims, which direction had the green light, and whatever seemed interesting. Starting at the CalTrain station, I worked my way along the Embarcadero and then heading up Market before cutting north and following a wandering route through Chinatown (studiously avoiding Grant), though part of North Beach and then nearly to the touristy Fisherman’s Wharf area.
I have walked past and photographed this building before, and I may have even photographed the steps, though in a very different way. This time the steps caught my attention. The photograph might seem monochromatic, but if you look closely you may spot a few small, brown autumn leaves on the steps.
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.
