Tag Archives: willow glen

Saint Ansel of the Donut Shop

March 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunlit donut shop interior with semi-concealed photograph

This photograph comes from a memorable little photo excursion… that started at my front door. Some years ago (wow, has it been five years!?) I decided on Christmas Eve day to go out for a walk with my camera. It was an afternoon of interesting light, and it seemed like something to do. As I walked through the familiar neighborhood several things surprised me. As I recall, the long winter shadows of trees were appearing on buildings everywhere I looked and they became a subject. And I also saw things in this neighborhood that I thought I knew so well — I’ve lived here for decades — that I simply had not noticed before.

There is something about having a camera in hand that changes the way I see. Usually it is all too easy to see “casually” without really considering or even really noticing what is right there. For example, I distinctly noticing for the first time the fronts of the upper stories of buildings in the small downtown business area. I had no doubt walked that street hundreds of times before without paying any conscious attention to them. As I walked past this little donut shop, beautiful late-afternoon light flooded its interior. Again, though I had been inside many times (yum! donuts!) this was the first time that I noticed the old Ansel Adams reproduction on the wall. (There is an earlier version of this photograph in black and white.)

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building, Windows, Blinds

February 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An urban building with vertical windows and blinds

I think I’ll stick with the black and white theme for one more day. This is a photograph I made five years ago. I remember stopping at this oddly plain little building on a walk not far from where I live. It was Christmas Eve day, and things were slowing down in anticipation of holiday festivities, so I went out on one of my local “photo walks” in the surrounding neighborhood. I do this from time to time for reasons that range from the desire to practice and tune up my “seeing” to wanting to see my surroundings more clearly — there is nothing like wandering with a camera in hand to encourage me to see things I would otherwise overlook. (One of the first times I did this in the neighborhood I was shocked to notice the upper stories on nearby business buildings that I had walked past for years.)

I think this must be some sort of office building, and perhaps behind these tightly shut blinds there is some sort of personal world that the rest of us cannot see. The outside of the building seems incredibly boring and lacking in any intentional design sense, yet the odd but functional windows start to look very strange when shot close up and without the rest of the building visible. The late afternoon sun was casting shadows from nearby trees to produce the mottled light.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

June 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A weathered red bench next to a suburban lawn and in front of a home with tree shadows

This probably seems like a different sort of photograph from me, but I actually have a thread of images along these lines that goes back quite a ways. They belong to what I think of as “wandering about my neighborhood” photographs, which I make on occasional walks in an extended version of my neighborhood – literally stepping out the front door and then walking. These walks encourage me to see things that I would otherwise miss, both in the general photographic sense of noticing things more when I have a camera in hand and in the more specific sense of noticing things that I otherwise simply pass by in my neighborhood.

I distinctly recall one of the first times I did this. I “saw” two things that I simply had never noticed before, even though I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years. First, in a nearby small downtown area there are buildings with more than one level – and it wasn’t until that first walk that I actually noticed the details of the second stories of these buildings. The second thing I noticed were shadows of trees. It turns out – no surprise now that I think about it – that they are everywhere. It was as if every building had trunks and branches and foliage painted on its walls. This photograph includes these shadows. It also has some other compositional elements that interest me – I’ll leave it to viewers to think about them – and there is something interesting to me about that old, weathered bench and the ball parked next to the column on the patio at the top of the concrete stairs.

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

Indian Restaurant

February 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon winter light on the exterior of a neighborhood Indian restaurant.

This restaurant is located not far from where I live – close enough that I could photograph it on a walk from my home. (Though these walks can sometimes carry me out to about a four mile radius or so…) This is not one of those fancy, up-scale Indian restaurants, but rather a local, neighborhood place whose location and outer appearance might not encourage you to go inside and try the delicious food. Yes, I’ve eaten there.

At first I was just thinking about the angles and surfaces of the building, but also about this interesting late-afternoon winter light that slants in almost parallel to the ground in the vertical dimension, and almost flat across the front wall of the restaurant. As I moved in to try to find a composition I noticed the empty vase for the first time, and as I line things up to keep the very bright light on a hidden wall out of the frame, I saw the bright and somewhat orange light reflected from that wall onto the more distant area to the left where a door is open (even though the restaurant is closed) and a blue milk carton crate has been abandoned.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: willow glen

Saint Ansel of the Donut Shop

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Building, Windows, Blinds

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Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

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Indian Restaurant

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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.