Tag Archives: tracks

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

Freeway Overpass, Townsend Street

July 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Freeway overpass crosses the train tracks along Townsend Street near the Caltrain station, San Francisco.

In the middle of a long string of landscape photographs from the Sierra Nevada, today I present a photograph of… what appears to be a trashed and abandoned area beneath a freeway overpass. I’m guess that at least a few people reading this might be perplexed.

While I absolutely love going to and photographing wild and scenic areas – and as a resident of northern California I’m fortunate to live close to some pretty amazing such places – those are not the only photographic subjects that I find interesting. The explanation is complicated and would require me to discuss a whole range of things including from the nature of beauty (e.g. – “beautiful” and “pretty” are not the same thing), the relationship between the concepts of “natural” and “civilized, the belief that part of what a photograph might do is show a thing in a way that the viewer might not otherwise consider, and even the practical effect on all of my photography from photographing more than one thing. Heck, I also just like to visit San Francisco and other urban areas and wander around!

This time of year I make regular trips to San Francisco, usually taking the train into The City fairly early in the morning and then wandering on foot wherever my interest leads me. On this morning I was up before 5:00 a.m., out the door to catch a bus at about 5:25, on the train a bit before 6:00, and walking out of the San Francisco Caltrain station a couple minutes after 7:00 a.m. As the train approached the station I noticed a number of freeway overpasses – the same sort of structures that were used so effectively in San Francisco Opera’s recent production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, which affected me visually as well as in the other expected ways. So as soon as I got off the train I headed back along Townsend to this little space beneath the 6th Street exit ramp from highway 280 and photographed in the very same “golden hour” light that I would look for if I were in the Sierra.

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk

April 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light above a hill near Mesquite Flat in Death Valley, backed by a large alluvial fan from Tucki Mountain.

At the end of this day I was shooting from the top of a low hill in the Valley east of Stovepipe Wells, and there were interesting subjects throughout almost the entire 360 degree panorama around this elevated position. With this in mind, I had chosen to use the long 100-400mm zoom so that I could have some flexibility in composing elements of this huge scene.

I was mainly working with things that were in the large arc to my west (dunes and Cottonwood mountains and base of Tucki Mountain), north (the main Valley and transverse dunes), and east (the mountains running along that edge of the Valley) since the further subjects of the lower Valley were more or less out of sight beyond the alluvial fan that appears in the photograph. But I kept being intrigued by the low, dark hill on the flats below the similar hill on which I was standing. There is a row of them stretching from near the Devils Cornfield area up and across this alluvial fan. As the evening light transitioned towards post-sunset light I saw that the glow from clouds (a bit of which is visible in the distance above the Black Mountains) was lighting this hill and the surrounding flats in an interesting and colorful way.

But I had a little problem. I was still working a number of subjects and once and I really needed to keep shooting that 100-400. 100mm was still too long for this scene, but I didn’t have time to remove it and put on a shorter lens. I figured that I could simply change the camera to vertical orientation, very carefully level the tripod, and include the whole scene in four panning vertical frames that I could stitch together later. People often do this so that they can produce extremely high-resolution image, but that wasn’t my goal at all. In any case, it worked, and not only did I manage to get the shot that needed a wider lens, but as a bonus it is a very high-resolution shot.

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

Brick Wall and Windows, Reflection

February 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Night photography of structures in the “historic core” of the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard with reflection in a rain puddle – Vallejo, California.

A few times each year I have the pleasure of photographing at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard with The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group founded my Tim Baskerville and now an important resource for information about night photography, night photography workshops, and fine night photography. During the first weekend of February I joined a small group for a visit to “the dark side” at Mare Island. In contrast to typical shoots there, this time there was no moon. However, since it had rained earlier in the day the clearing clouds and left-over reflecting puddles provided special conditions that aren’t usually available.

This scene is probably familiar to almost anyone who has shot at Mare Island. The brick wall and windows belong to the museum located in the “historic core” of the facility at the corner of 8th and Nimitz, where the huge overhead structures were used to move heavy equipment and parts to the ship construction area along the waterfront.

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.

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

Nimitz Street, High Fog, Night

September 23, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Nimitz Street with high fog and moonlight and ambient artificial lighting, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

This is probably one of the iconic scenes for night photographers at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. This shot looks up Nimitz Street near the waterfront and across railway tracks toward some of the core old buildings and beyond to the smoke stack of the power plant. It includes some of the huge overhead structures that were, as I understand it, used to move large ship components such as engines from the shops in which they were assembled to the ships under construction.

As is typical at night at Mare Island, the photograph includes a wild range of types of lighting. The 3/4 moon is partially responsible for illuminating the high fog, but the fog also picks up a warmer glow from a variety of types of lighting on the ground at Mare Island and beyond. The buildings are lit by some of the same light sources, but also by local security lightning and some street lights including tungsten, sodium vapor and perhaps even florescent sources. (When composing such shots I have to be very careful to place the camera in a position where direct light from these many sources is blocked by buildings, towers, and so forth.)

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

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