Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: England, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Wall, London

October 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A painted and weathered brick wall beneath a London overpass

I have only a general recollection of where I made this photograph. I think it was on the south side of the Thames, probably somewhere beyond the Millennium Bridge and in an area of older narrow streets where we walked both to kill some time before an appointment and to wander and see what we could see.

There is, obviously, nothing all that exotic about this wall. In fact, I’ve likely photographed similar subjects in the SF Bay Area. I think several things caused me to stop and shoot it. First, to be honest, I was in a shooting mode – in other words I was shooting quickly and shooting a lot of frames. But beyond that, I was intrigued by the lights, muted by the narrow street and the fact – again, if I recall correctly – that this was shot near the edge of an underpass of some sort. Bricks often intrigue me, but here the layers of paint applied to the bricks, which really shouldn’t be painted, probably covers something that we are not supposed to see. The larger underlying area of black paint contrasts with the Halloween orange that must have been added later. But now new stuff has already been added to the wall on top of the old cover-up job.

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Urban/Street

Buttnick Mfg. Co.

October 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A person wearing a backpack walks in front of the Buttnick Mfg. Co. building in Seattle, Washington

OK, I admit that this isn’t perhaps an easy photograph to warm up to and, yes, the guy is way out of focus. As often happens when wandering the streets of some city – or, frankly, with other kinds of photography, too – one thing caught my attention and once I looked I saw other things… and then there was an unexpected accident. Despite rumors to the contrary, sometimes photography works that way. (To reassure some of you, photographs also work the opposite way sometimes – carefully thought out and made in a state of prolonged contemplation.)

As we walked past this corner, for some reason the name “Buttnick Mfg. Co.” caught my attention all by itself. This, and the visual appearance of the sign got me thinking about how the presentation and appearance of commercial entities has changed. Today, if “Buttnick Mfg. Co.” was starting up in this part of Seattle or almost any other relatively large city, there would be plastic signs, a carefully contrived sign designed to present and foster a particular way of viewing the firm, electronic lights, and probably a motto along the lines of, “Innovative Design and Manufacturing for Today’s Buttnick Buyer.” But this sign was probably painted by some local sign-painter and it offers nothing more than the name of the company, which is probably the name of the founder and perhaps someone who actually worked there. But, urban development being what it is, it looks to me like Buttnick is probably no longer to be found, and instead we see a group of smaller shops inside the building. (There now are electronic signs in the window and there is a SALE going on.) About that person in the photograph… while I was planning to include the people on the far side of the street as they walked in front of the building, the out-of-focus, photobombing, Seattle street person was entirely accidental – but somehow appropriate.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Yaquina Bay Bridge

October 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Yaquina Bay Bridge, Newport, Oregon

Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area from a week in the Seattle area back in August, we decided to take the long way back and turn a two-day trip into a four-day trip. After spending a day in Portland, we headed southwest to the Oregon Coast Highway (US 101) and followed that south into the northwest corner of California and then on home.

To my eye, the Oregon coast is in some ways familiar, having some similarities to parts of the northern and central California coastlines that I know quite well. But it seems generally a bit more remote – especially by comparison to the California coast near the San Francisco and Monterey areas – and the ocean seems a bit wilder. The towns are mostly further apart and smaller. Newport is one of the larger cities, presumably due to the large and protected port at Yaquina Bay. The coast highway crosses this bay on the striking Yaquina Bay Bridge, with its beautiful arch shapes.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

October 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dry summer grasses in Dana Meadow near Tioga Pass, forest leading to Kuna Crest

I think of this photograph as being, in some ways, very unremarkable. In a few other ways there are some things that are at least a bit unusual about it, though this probably isn’t obvious. The scene is one that is familiar to anyone who has driven over Tioga Pass between the eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park and west side destinations. The Yosemite Sierra along this route is a very diverse place, but the large sub-alpine meadows surrounded by forest and higher peaks is very common and characteristic of the area. Sierra visitors are also probably familiar with the annual seasonal transition from lush, green meadows to drier, brown meadows.

So what is a bit unusual about this scene? For one thing, I shot it during more or less the midday hours. This is not typically when I photograph scenes like this one, but this daytime view is probably the sort of thing that we see most often when we are actually there in the range. The color of the meadow grass is also a bit unusual – not that this coloration occurs, but that it happened so early in the season this year. The almost complete absence of green in the meadow is more characteristic of a time several weeks later than this early August date, when typically we might see a combination of dry and lush. But this year has been anything but a typical one in the Sierra and in much of California. Last winter was extremely dry, and there was barely any precipitation after the new year started – and this was the second drought year in a row. The conditions in the Sierra, as seen here, are not unprecedented, but they are very unusual.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

Brick Wall, London

Buttnick Mfg. Co.

Yaquina Bay Bridge

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

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