“Max Headroom 14 Feet” — A roll-up garage door in an alcove, Aberdeen.
Our May visit to Aberdeen, Scotland marked a transition on our trip. We had just completed a week-plus driving tour of Northwest Scotland, where we spent a lot of time in rural and wild areas. After returning our rental car in Inverness, we went straight to the station and boarded a train to Aberdeen, where we planned a quiet stop before heading on to Ireland. Why Aberdeen? Patty had visited the city decades ago when she went to the UK for an international orchestra festival. She wanted to return and see what she might remember of Aberdeen.
“So That Sheep May Safely Graze” — A road sign on a single-track road in Scottish sheep country.
On the Isle of Skye, and for that matter all over Scotland, there are sheep. A LOT of sheep. What cattle are to the American west, sheep are to Scotland, or so it seems. The sheep and their abundant pastures are a significant component of the Scottish landscape — you encounter them everywhere when you walk or drive. I’ll let you speculate on the purpose of this road sign for a moment before explaining… (If you read this post where the next paragraph is already visible, pause and see if you can figure it out.)
This is a close view of some warning flags posted at a busy street crossing in an urban area. The idea is that pedestrians grab a flag and, I suppose, wave it at approaching motorists in the hope that they don’t get run over. Hmmm… The photograph exists for a couple of reasons. It is one of the neighborhood subjects that I encounter on my almost-daily walks. I always carry a camera and maintain some level of attention to potential subjects. To be honest, the great majority of those photographs are not and are not intended to be great — the real object is to keep my eyes open and to practice seeing.
The second reason for the photo is either a bit funny or a bit thought-provoking. Recently I have shared a few photographs featuring the color orange after being challenged to make pictures of that color by a group of fellow photographers. As I did this I realized that the boundaries of “orange” are a bit nebulous. Some things are, without any doubt, orange. But others that initially strike me as being orange start to verge on red, brown, or even yellow. There are not always clear lines between these colors. In any case, these flags first looked orange to me… but when placed in the context of other orange objects they began to seem more red.
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.
Sign near a light rail crossing in an old industrial area.
These signs are along one of the routes I take on my (nearly) daily urban walks. Sometimes the walks stick to tree-lined residential streets, but some of the routes take me into older areas that are a bit rougher around the edges, many of which feature old businesses and shops. There are still rail lines through some of these areas, though they are rarely used — and some have been closed off or even converted to non-rail uses. Here the local light rail transit system follows the route of the old tracks and crosses near an intersection where I found these signs.
Until a few months ago I frequently encountered the light rail trains at crossings like this one. But this is a Valley Transit Authority (VTA) route, and that is the entity that was the victim of a mass shooting earlier this year that tragically took the lives of a number of employees who work on the light rail system. The system remains shut down and there is so far no word on when it will reopen.
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.
