Tag Archives: urban

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

Orange, Green, and Black

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Orange, Green, and Black
A safety pylon casts a shadow on green metal panels next to black plastic.

Orange, Green, and Black. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A safety pylon casts a shadow on green metal panels next to black plastic.

This photograph came out of my participation in a project to photograph orange things (around Halloween, not surprisingly) with a group of fellow photographers. The group gets together every so often — virtually at the current time — to share recent photographic work. I suspect that the reasons include both social value and photographic value, but these little exercises can be useful, especially if you are trying to get “un-stuck,” are looking to explore something different, or are just seeking out a way to practice the work of seeing.

Because it was around Halloween I wanted to avoid going for the low-hanging fruit and just photographing pumpkins and autumn leaves. So for a couple of weeks as I walked around my community I kept my eyes open for anything orange. I also started to try to think a bit more broadly about what it meant to photograph orange — and one idea was that orange could easily just be one component color in a subject. Since I was looking for that color, it isn’t a surprise that the pylon first caught my attention. But I quickly started thinking about the relationship between green and orange, the shadow, and the dark pattern at the left side.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Urban/Street

Pumpkin Universe

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Pumpkin Universe
What was left of a pumpkin on the day after Halloween.

Pumpkin Universe. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

What was left of a pumpkin on the day after Halloween.

This is another in the “orange series” of photographs that I made in October as part of a seasonal challenge issued by a group of fellow photographers — namely to go out and make photographs of orange things. I’ve written about this in other posts, so I’ll keep the story somewhat short. I started with the obvious Halloween notion of photographing pumpkins, but then I decided to look for ways to photograph them somewhat differently — not jack-o-lanterns and not the common “fall bounty” images. So I headed out into the neighborhood looking for distorted and damaged subjects.

There’s a well-known quote about a photograph being what it is (a supposedly objective visual record) and what else it is (a rather wide field). It should be obvious that you can “see” a photograph in multiple ways — an image of the literal thing, a suggestion of something else that it isn’t, and so on. While this photograph obviously depicts a fairly ordinary thing, I enjoy looking at it as something different from that.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Urban/Street

Morning After

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Morning After
Sad pumpkin, the day after Halloween.

Morning After. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sad pumpkin, the day after Halloween.

And you thought we’d get through this season without me sharing a pumpkin picture. No such luck! A couple of weeks ago someone suggested making photographs of orange things. Pumpkins seemed kind of too obvious, but in the end I could not entirely resist. Mostly I kept my eyes open for anything that was orange — signs, paint, vehicles, lights — but somehow these gourds kept jumping into the frame. (If you have never tried it, going out and constraining your photography to a color or a shape or something similar is a great exercise.) One thing I learned from the process is that “orange” is much more nebulous concept than I had thought — the “edges” of this color bleed over into red, yellow, and brown.

This sad fellow was sitting at the edge of a driveway in a pile of leaves on the morning after Halloween. The expression seemed like the ultimate “meh” look to me. Finally, in case you are wondering… yes, there is still one more pumpkin photograph to come. I know you are thrilled!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Sidewalk and Fence, Autumn Light

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Sidewalk and Fence, Autumn Light
Autumn light shine through a fence to illuminate a sidewalk and fallen leaves.

Sidewalk and Fence, Autumn Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn light shines through a fence to illuminate a sidewalk and fallen leaves.

Some years ago I went on a local walk that changed the way I think about these things. Like most of us, when I think of what I want to photography, my thoughts ofter turn to placed that are distant, exotic, and different from what I experience in my daily life. For me this means lots of fascinating landscapes — deserts, mountains, ocean, and more — or it may mean travel to distant urban areas. But on the day when I went on that walk, I carried my camera. When I walk for exercise I usually don’t pay close attention to my surroundings. Instead I tend to let my thoughts drift (a good thing sometimes!) and the focus is internal. But with camera in hand (and I mean literally in my hand, not just in the bag), I start to see things that I have overlooked. On that particular walk, on a winter day, I suddenly realized, for example, that there were shadows everywhere and that they were worth photographing.

Speaking of shadows, this is the season when they become more prevalent and more interesting. Because the Northern Hemisphere sun never gets very high in the sky, shadows are cast by almost everything and on almost everything. As I came around a corner on another walk-with-the-camera this week I was stopped in my tracks by the shape of the shadow from this metal fence, falling across a sidewalk and a few autumn leaves.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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