Tag Archives: weathered

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!

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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.

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

Door Number Three

May 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

There is not a whole lot to write about this photograph, except that it is another in a sequence of photographs that I made in a small alley off of the Embarcadero in San Francisco, an alley that extends between buildings toward the waterfront and which has often been locked up when I have walked by there previously. Since it and several similar alley ways were open on this morning, I took the opportunity to wander into them and photograph some of the old buildings that sit on these waterfront piers, focusing mostly on small details.

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

Blow Horn and Pipes

May 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hand painted sign and various pipes and valves on a concrete wall in San Francisco, California.

This is one of those odd little photographic vignettes you can find if you poke your nose into the right (or wrong) little alleys while wandering around in a city. I have passed this general area many times before, and had often notice fenced-off or gated small alleys extending along the sides of some of the buildings. I had even attempted to photograph through the fences, but without much success. However, for some reason – or else a fortunate coincidence – on this morning most or even all of the gates were open and I could wander down along the sides of these old buildings with their interesting and weathered textures and subjects.

This collection of “stuff” was next to a door that looked like it might have been used as a loading area, so I imagine that the old “BLOW HORN” sign, hand-painted directly on the concrete wall, must have once supplied instructions to those coming to make pick-ups or deliveries. I still wonder though about the fact that the sign was squeezed in behind this has of pipes, given that there were large areas of clear wall just a foot or two away from this assemblage of pipes and valves.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: weathered

Pipe and Wall, Fremont District

Weathered Wall, Covered Window and Can, Fremont District

Door Number Three

Blow Horn and Pipes

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