Tag Archives: windows

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Doors

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Red Doors
Red doors, reflective panes, San Francisco

Red Doors. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Red doors, reflective panes, San Francisco.

Here is another photograph from my search for color last week in San Francisco. OK, my main purpose in taking the train up there wan’t literally to search for color — it was to do street photography in this rich urban environment. But the way I see “street” often includes color as an important element. (Sometimes I employ a little mental checklist to keep me focused and flexible when looking for subjects, and the word “color” is one of the points on the list.)

As is often the case, I don’t recall precisely where I found this pair of red doors. (It was quite possibly in the vicinity of San Francisco’s Chinatown district.) Oddly, I do have a rather specific memory of seeing the doors and making the photograph though, a process that included an answer to the question, “How do I avoid putting my own reflection in those windows!?”

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: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Digital Printing

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Digital Printing
Wall and sidewalk of a building advertising “digital printing.”

Digital Printing. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Wall and sidewalk of a building advertising “digital printing.”

Sometimes I wonder what people must think if they happen to notice me making street photographs. Take this image for example. I was walking with some sense of purpose back towards the 4th and Townsend Caltrain station, where I would pick up a train heading back down the peninsula following a morning of photography in San Francisco. In a location where most people are similarly focused on getting from point A to point B, usually with heads down, I suddenly stopped, stepped off the sidewalk… and photographed the wall of a nondescript building.

This photograph may be the urban equivalent of the “intimate landscape” image — I certainly think of photographs like this as being landscapes, and this one zeroes in on a very small area of a subject that folks overlook. Being a photographer who prints digitally, the “digital printing” sign had caught my eye when I passed by here a few hours earlier. Now I saw the soft light on the scene, the weathered quality of the wall, the geometry of the subject, and the relationship between the blue bar at the top and the blue quality of the light on the sidewalk.

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.

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

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Two Buildings, Night

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Two Buildings, Night
“Two Buildings, Night” — Night photograph of two buildings in the historic core of Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

One of the attractions of photographing at night is the way that everything changes and familiar and even mundane subjects can be transformed. Night almost automatically adds an element of mystery to subjects, even when the literal subjects might arguably be mundane. This is partly the natural associations we make with the night, but it is also the objective nature of the light — rather than working under the sun or other forms of light from the sky, we rely almost always on multiple point sources of artificial illuminations. (And exception would be working under full moon light, but that has its own implications.)

I made this photograph in the “historic core” area of the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, California. For the most part many of the original structures still stand in this area. (Much more extensive redevelopment has occurred elsewhere on the island, some of which has removed the old facilities.) Here some of the buildings have been updated and put to use for more modern purposes, but the general feeling of the place remains. I have photographed in this little alley-way for about fifteen years now. Somethings stay the same and other change, and on this visit I found that I was able to use the new corner windows on the foreground building as a point of focus.

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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

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Photographs: Structures and Objects

Celebrate 75 Years

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Celebrate 75 Years
“Celebrate 75 Years” — Empty chairs, windows, and a small sign

This photograph could be seen as a lesson and as an example regarding practice… and in a few other ways, as well. I don’t know if much needs to be said about it, but I’ll offer a few thoughts anyway. I made it while I was busy doing what might seem more like “work” photography — documenting the opening reception of an exhibit by my friend Oliver Klink, whose beautiful “Cultures in Transition” exhibit had recently been installed at PhotoCentral in Hayward, California. Mostly I was running around making photographs of various people attending the event and photographs of the gallery space. But every so often I spot something that seems like a photograph in its own right, and I disconnect from the work momentarily to capture that “something.”

This is, admittedly, a somewhat minimal and perhaps even somewhat enigmatic photograph — and it also doesn’t likely seem all that connected to the landscape photography of mine that may be more familiar. There are several ways one could “read” this image, but rather than being didactic about it, I’ll leave the reading to the viewer. What do you see?

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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.