Tag Archives: windows

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall
Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. March 11, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of dilapidated building in green and purple, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

In contrast to the huge and somewhat garishly lit iconic towers and cranes of Mare Island, there are innumerable little quiet and hidden subjects to photograph. I think that most of us start with the obvious subjects and eventually, after shooting them many times, begin to look for these other possibilities. I photographed this in very low light, complicated by a bit of wind, and I could barely see the subject as I worked. (In order to focus I had to shine a small light on the edge of part of the structure.)

The colors were almost a bit of a surprise. At Mare Island there (or, in too many cases used to be, now that the lighting has been “modernized”) a wild variation in lighting types. There is often the moonlight. A glow comes across the water from Vallejo. Sodium vapor lamps can produce a sort of sickly yellow color. Tungsten light is warm colored, and fluorescent light can be very strange. As a consequence, the colors of this nighttime world are more about the colors of the lighting than the colors of the subjects themselves. The side of this building, which is probably quite drab in daylight, picked up subtle green and purple tones under the artificial light.


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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Building, Reflections

Building, Reflections
Portions of downtown San Francisco reflected in the windows of a tall building

Building, Reflections. San Francisco, California. February 3, 3017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Portions of downtown San Francisco reflected in the windows of a tall building

This is an urban landscape photograph — while the subject is quite different from natural landscapes, I think of it is ways that are at least partially similar. Superficially, the urban world of towers and canyons presents some possibilities that are related to the mountains and valleys that I photograph in the non-urban world; I think about light and form in similar ways; and the ways I view each type of landscape can’t help but inform how I view the other.

It was only a few years ago when I understood something that intrigues me about glass-covered buildings like this one. (Yes, I’m slow sometimes…) We feel like we are looking at a building in a photograph like this, but a good part of what we actually see is not the building at all, but its form made visible by means of reflections of its surroundings, including other buildings and the sky. Here some skeletal forms help define its shape, perhaps more so than with some other buildings, but between those elements the windows themselves mostly reflect things that are not the building itself


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

Building In Muted Light

Building In Muted Light
Cloud-muted light on an urban building near SFMOMA

Building In Muted Light. San Francisco, California. February 3, 3017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cloud-muted light on an urban building near SFMOMA

This building is becoming something of a theme for me, and I often end up treating it in black and white. I made the photograph from one of the outdoor terraces high on the side of the new section of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), from which there are interesting and varied views of the surrounding downtown San Francisco neighborhood. This building is perhaps the closest to the museum, and its form and the texture of its surface are interesting.

I originally thought that it would be a color photograph. The soft light played in interesting ways on the subtle colors of the stone and the pastel color of the windows. But the more I worked on it the more something persuaded me to let go of that nod to realism and instead go with a rather highly processed monochrome interpretation. There is a school of architecture photography that makes heavy use of techniques that darken areas of the image and then compensate by selective lightening. This is often complemented by some techniques involving blur — a sort of masking effect. I used these and more, including some heavy dodging and burning to get this photograph to what you see here — perhaps for no more reason than that I wanted to explore some of these techniques.


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

Apartment Building, Reflections

Apartment Building, Reflections
Against the backdrop of a black tower, an apartment building reflects the urban environment

Apartment Building, Reflections. San Francisco, California. February 3, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Against the backdrop of a black tower, an apartment building reflects the urban environment

Since I spent a day in San Francisco last week, you can expect a group of architecture and street and similar photographs over the next few day, possibly intermixed with landscapes and nature for a few weeks!. I was there to see a particular installation at SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I always take my camera, partly to photograph people at the museum, partly to photograph the building itself, and partly to take advantage of photographing the surrounding neighborhoods, especially from elevated vantage points at the museum.

The recent expansion of the museum added a new wing at the rear, with seven floors of exhibits and other services. (And, as I realized on this visit, several more floors above that which appear to be inaccessible to the public, unfortunately.) Several outdoor terraces and balconies provide interesting overlooks above the surrounding urban scene, and during my visit the light was very interesting, too — ranging from cloudy and rainy to occasionally clear, but often with at least some clouds softening the light. I’m fascinated by the juxtapositions of form and color in the dense field of surrounding buildings, including the contrast between light tones and reflection of the building on the right versus the dark, slick, and vaguely ominous black of the further building.


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 | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | LinkedIn | Email


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