Tag Archives: urban

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

Tanker 540

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Tanker 540
A tanker trailer parked in an industrial area.

Tanker 540. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tanker trailer parked in an industrial area.

With this photograph I take a little detour away from the recent Sierra Nevada fall color photographs. (Don’t worry — there are more to come!) This subject is about as far away from those colorful photographs as possible, I think. During this pandemic period I walk a lot, every day if possible, and sometimes quite a few miles. The walks take me into lots of places in a two to three mile radius from where we live, and this includes quite diverse areas ranging from a small downtown to wealthy residential neighborhoods to old areas of the city and even some industrial zones.

This photograph comes from the latter — an old industrial area now surrounded by more urban areas, with its edges gradually being chewed away by condo developments and other kinds of revitalization. Walking down a street near a plant that supplies materials for building roads, I passed several of these black trailers parked by this old concrete building. The trailer itself seemed interesting, but so did the building and the angled shadows of overhead utility wires.

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.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pandemia, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Stage Door

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Stage Door
“Stage Door” — The edge of a shadow falls across a stage door.

This photograph qualifies as part of the “postcards from pandemic” group, as I made it while on one of the long local walks that I’ve been taking in and around my neighborhood since the lock-downs began six months ago. Yes, it has been that long. The good news is that if all goes according to plan we might be almost half way to a vaccine and the beginning of a return to something like normalcy.

This photograph is also an example of something that afflicts most (though perhaps not quite all) photographers, namely an interest or even obsession with form, color, and various kinds of patterns, even when seen in mundane locations. This is a side door to a school theater — hardly an iconic subject! But as I walked past at just the right moment, the shadow diagonally bisected this very blue door, and the angles of shadows and stairways converged in interesting ways.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pandemia, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shuttered

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Shuttered
A snack vending stand, shuttered for the pandemic.

Shuttered. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A snack vending stand, shuttered for the pandemic.

This is one from the “Postcards from Pandemia” series of photographs that I occasionally make while out walking through and around my semi-locked-down world. The subject here is a building that I pass regularly as I walk through a nearby park. Typically this would be the busy snack bar for the local Little League fields, with parents working inside and kids and families lined up outside to buy candy, sodas, and other snacks. (Gummy Worms, anyone?)

But not this year. I still see the occasional small group of kids with a parent or two playing catch or practicing batting, but no games and no crowds. It is a bit less so now than it was back in late-March and early April when the world shut down around here. At that point I could walk and see virtually no one — I often just walked in the streets since there was no traffic.

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.

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: Architecture, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

In The Urban Canyon

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In The Urban Canyon
A wall of tall buildings in downtown San Francisco.

In The Urban Canyon. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wall of tall buildings in downtown San Francisco.

Keeping with the “canyon” theme of so many recent posts — but with an entirely different sort of canyon — this is a photograph from downtown San Francisco that I made on one of my regular walks through the City. You could find this scene if you walked down the central Market Street that connects the center of the City with the Ferry Terminal.

I have previously written about how I can connect the ways I photograph the wild landscape to how I see the urban landscape. One of the most direct relationships might be between the deep and narrow canyons of Southern Utah and these deep and narrow canyons in urban downtown areas. In both cases, there is not that much direct light in the lowest levels aside from the middle of the day or when the sun aligns with the length of the canyon. Consequently, understanding reflected light is very important in these places.( In addition to the usual diffused light in the depths of wilderness canyons, the urban versions often feature direct reflections from windows, which can sometimes light a subject from more than one angle.)

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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