Tag Archives: washington

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Driveway, Arrows, Yellow Line

June 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

White arrows and a yellow line painted on a parking lot driveway, Seattle, Washington.

Another in the series of photographs of urban forms, shot in Seattle in early May. The story, and this isn’t the first time that I’ve mentioned it, is that I had a free hour during a visit to Seattle. I found out that there was a “Seattle Photo Walk” going on in the Fremont District, which I think I may have passed through before but where I had never photographed – so I met up with the group and spent an hour wandering around in the Fremont area.

I made quite a few photographs during that short time, and near the end of my hour I crossed back into Fremont by walking across a bridge, and this bridge turned out to figure in several photographs, either as a subject or as a vantage point. In this photograph it is merely the vantage point, as I shot into this driveway leading to an underground parking area while walking across the bridge. The opposing arrows were an obvious interest, but I also was intrigued by the single yellow line cutting through the scene and the overall concrete grayness of this spot.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: People, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Bicycle Rider, Brick Wall

June 18, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bicycle rider in orange rides past a brick wall, Seattle, Washington.

This is going to be the first in a small series of photographs from Seattle, Washington that focus on what might be described as urban geometry – odd or interesting juxtapositions of shapes and colors and so forth. I made this photograph back in early May when I joined a group of Seattle photographers for a “Seattle Photo Walk” in the Fremont District. I had only an hour to shoot, but I managed to work intensely for that hour and come back with some stuff that is interesting to me in one way or another.

One thing that I enjoy about photographing the urban environment is that potential subjects come and go almost constantly and often last only for a brief instant. I have to react so fast that I certainly cannot see everything in the frame in a conscious way while making the photograph, though there is something to be said for perhaps have an intuitive understanding of what is there. When I made this photograph I was walking along a bridge the heads back into Seattle’s Fremont district. I had been looking at these brick buildings which feign being old – they are actually new but with old-looking brick walls. The geometry of the buildings attracted me, but I hadn’t really seen a photograph in them at this point. Then, as I looked, I saw the cyclist coming along wearing this very bright orange shirt and helmet and wearing an orange pack. I quickly framed up a composition that included the building, the walkway, and a portion of the road and then waited for the rider to enter the frame. As he passed through I quickly squeezed off three frames. In two of them, a car obscures the cyclist, but in the final one, taken just before he exited the frame, he is all alone against the patterns of the road and the building. (I didn’t notice until later the windows reflected in the middle row of windows on the building.)

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pipe and Wall, Fremont District

June 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A drainage pipe attached to an urban wall, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

This minimalist photograph shows something barely worthy of a photograph, by most standards – a plastic drainage pipe attached to a worn stucco wall up a small alley in the Fremont District of Seattle, Washington. There are, perhaps, a few visual puzzles to consider though. The perspective is oddly skewed for several reasons. First, my camera was angled upwards fairly steeply to shoot this wall as it was above the alley I was standing in, and the alley was heading down a slope. In addition, some of the visual cues about up, down, and sideways are a bit contradictory. First, the longer section of the pipe obviously cuts across the scene diagonally. But a close look at the upper section of the pipe shows that it is not quite vertical, with true vertical shown by the drip/seepage lines on the wall.

In any case, enough musing about the photograph. It is a drain pipe and a wall, and I don’t suppose that leaves room for a whole of additional description!

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Weathered Wall, Covered Window and Can, Fremont District

June 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A can is stuck in the grate covering an alley window on a badly weathered and stained wall, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

This is also a photograph in the series I made during the hour that I had to shoot along with the Seattle Photowalk folks in early May, when they met up to photograph in the Fremont district of Seattle. I took a one-hour hour “mini-vacation” from the other business that had brought me to Seattle, grabbed a camera, and wandered about making photographs for sixty minutes.

Aside from some technical stuff (e.g. shooting handheld rather than with a tripod, perhaps shooting with just a prime or two rather than zooms, etc.), the secret is that I approach street photography in ways that are not all that different from how I approach nature or landscape photography. In both cases, I may photograph both the larger scene and smaller subjects contained within it. In both cases, I tend to “prowl” for images, even though I do begin with certain ideas of what I might look for and what I might find. Also in both, I think I begin by trying to find things that interest me first, and only then thinking about how to make photographs of them. Here I had seen a skinny little side alley. At first I didn’t see anything in it that was an obvious photographic subject, but for some reason I still wandered into in and just looked about. The first thing that I “saw” was the old wall with its odd patterns, perhaps the result of rain or of previous poorly-done paint jobs. The texture intrigued me, but I wasn’t seeing a photograph of that alone, so I kept looking. It didn’t take long to notice some things placed on or within the wall – some pipes (that’s another photograph) and this odd window, blocked with what looks like a piece of wood and with an old can jammed into the security grill. I made a few photographs and moved on.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: washington

Driveway, Arrows, Yellow Line

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Bicycle Rider, Brick Wall

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Pipe and Wall, Fremont District

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Weathered Wall, Covered Window and Can, Fremont District

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

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