Tag Archives: urban

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

Flag Makers

March 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A complex landscape of steps, columns, braces, windows, reflections, and buildings

I made this photograph near the new, lower level entrance to the remodeled San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) during a visit around the start of the new year. The old entrance to the museum has now been augmented by a new entrance that leads into the newly added wing. A large installation fills the space on the very lowest level, and large windows open from there to the surrounding buildings and a stairway leading to the entrance one floor higher.

I love photographing in museums — for the architectural spaces and the people — and I photograph inside and around MOMA every time I visit. Some subjects are immediately obvious but other take a bit longer to figure out. This open area on the lower level is, for me, in the latter category. It immediately felt like a place to make photographs, but it has taken quite a few visits to begin to reveal its potential. This photograph is more or less a study of the many layers and angles found within and outside of this space, including layers of time between the very new museum and the very old brick wall just beyond the stairs.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

March 16, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Night photograph of dilapidated building in green and purple, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

In contrast to the huge and somewhat garishly lit iconic towers and cranes of Mare Island, there are innumerable little quiet and hidden subjects to photograph. I think that most of us start with the obvious subjects and eventually, after shooting them many times, begin to look for these other possibilities. I photographed this in very low light, complicated by a bit of wind, and I could barely see the subject as I worked. (In order to focus I had to shine a small light on the edge of part of the structure.)

The colors were almost a bit of a surprise. At Mare Island there (or, in too many cases used to be, now that the lighting has been “modernized”) a wild variation in lighting types. There is often the moonlight. A glow comes across the water from Vallejo. Sodium vapor lamps can produce a sort of sickly yellow color. Tungsten light is warm colored, and fluorescent light can be very strange. As a consequence, the colors of this nighttime world are more about the colors of the lighting than the colors of the subjects themselves. The side of this building, which is probably quite drab in daylight, picked up subtle green and purple tones under the artificial light.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Summer Evening, Little Italy

March 12, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People crowd the streets of Little Italy on a warm summer evening in Manhattan

For some reason, I too often find myself in New York in the middle of August. Not that I dislike New York — actually I love the place, for wandering, for photography, for museums, for food, for many things. It has been almost six months since I was last there and I already feel like I’m overdue for a visit. The issue is with August. As my sons, who live there, have told me, August is perhaps the least comfortable time to visit. it tends to be hot and muggy, and this is why many New Yorkers pick this time to be somewhere else.

But even though I know this I have probably made half of my New York visits during this month. It has become almost a standing joke in our household. On this 2014 August day we had been in Chinatown looking for food, and afterwards we walked up and into Little Italy, where on summer evenings like this one the streets are filled with people, looking for espresso and gelato.

Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shop Window, Shadows

March 9, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon sun casts shadows on display in a shop window

We headed to Southern California just after the New Year. It was an excuse to take the Pacific Coast Highway down the California coast — we were fortunate to do this before winter storms forced a long-term closure! — and to visit various family members. Between the scheduled events we wandered a bit and visited whatever nearby thing seemed interesting.

We spent this afternoon wandering downtown Pasadena. It was a fairly lazy day — we had the afternoon pretty much free, with nothing on the calendar but an evening get-together. I made this photograph as the low-angle afternoon winter light slanted across the street and through the windows of this store to produce complex patterns of reflections, text, and the store’s interior.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: urban

Flag Makers

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

Summer Evening, Little Italy

Shop Window, Shadows

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