Tag Archives: windows

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

June 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Metal staircase and wood framed windows on an old building at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, photographed under the light of the full moon.

This month I have had the opportunity to return to the ongoing task for filing through older raw files to see what I missed the first time around. (The task also leads to deleting some files that I originally held on to.) For me this is an important ritual, as I often accidentally “leave behind” some photographs when I first review them – either I get to busy and move on before I fully explore them, or in some cases I simply don’t yet “see” the photograph when I look at it too soon after making it. I have a theory about the latter issue. Sometimes I think I’m so invested in what I hoped or thought the photograph would be that I fail to see what it really is, at least until I’ve waited a while.

The subject of this photograph is the exterior of a building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard in Vallejo, a place that I have photographed only in the dark! I have worked with this building before. It is superficially a pretty uninteresting structure, but some of the unusual exterior stairways become interesting compositionally when illuminated by moonlight as in this photograph. I’ll share a few odd technical details about this one, too. The exposure time was nearly 8 minutes! And the capture was still underexposed. Since I cannot meter a scene like this, I often make my first exposure based on some sort of educated hunch – and I guess I just couldn’t imagine that I’d have to stand there any longer than this! Of course, because of the distance between the close-in railing and the far portions of the upper story, I had to use a small aperture of f/16. And being concerned about noise I shot at ISO 200. In the dark. Right. So one reason that I think I neglected to work with this file was that it seemed underexposed – OK, it was underexposed, even given the very dark subject of the scene. However, when I began to work with the raw file I discovered that I could push it the equivalent of several stops and the image would still hold good quality without obtrusive noise. I like the odd combination of shapes and angles, and in the end I think the very dark interpretation is actually the right one for this subject.

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

Windows, Ramp, and Asphalt

June 20, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The side of a metal building with windows reflecting an asphalt parking area with painted lines, Seattle, Washington.

This is the third in the short series of urban geometry photographs from my early May visit to Seattle, on which I had an hour (only an hour!) to photograph in the Fremont District with a group on a Seattle Photo Walk. After starting in “downtown” Fremont, meeting up at the Lenin statue, wandering over beneath the Aurora Bridge, and walking back along the waterfront, I climbed the stairs to another bridge that took me back toward my starting point.

This bridge turned out to be an interesting subject and vantage point. I made a few photographs of the bridge itself, mostly focusing on details, but for the most part those did not end up being images that I’ll share. However, once I got up on the bridge and started to walk across it, the vantage point it provide across the tops of buildings and down into areas below was interesting. The subject of this photograph is probably some of the most banal looking office space around, especially since I narrowed the composition down to simply showing a wall, some windows, a bit of concrete, the shadow of the bridge on which I was standing, and a painted out section of an asphalt parking area. It is what it is, and you get to figure out what that might be! :-)

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

Visual Puzzle with Tree

June 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tree with early spring greenery against a backdrop of the reflecting windows of downtown San Francisco buildings.

On a mid-April walk though portions of downtown San Francisco to make photographs, while passing through the financial district I was these branches with new spring leaves juxtaposed with a conjunction of building angles, reflected and distorted light, and colors that created a wild abstraction.

The urban environment often holds visual attractions that are not always immediately scene and which sometimes require one to look past the more obvious grit and turmoil. (Those, too, can be a photographic subject… but not this time.) In downtown concrete canyons with glass covered buildings, there is a constantly varying world of wild distortions and conjunctions and perspectives. If you think about it, very little of what you think you see in this photograph is really “there.” The thing the fills the largest portion of the frame is a crazily distorted reflection of other building and sky, fractured and bent by the distortions from the glass – in essence you don’t really see this building at all!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: windows

Moonlit Stairs and Windows

Windows, Ramp, and Asphalt

Bicycle Rider, Brick Wall

Visual Puzzle with Tree

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