Very old and worn out garage details in the Mission District, San Francisco, California.
Another (perhaps the second-to-last) in the series of photographs of these old and very worn garage doors found in a Mission District ally in San Francisco.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Detail of a brightly painted red, yellow, blue, and white wall in San Francisco’s Mission District.
One sub-category of my photography focuses on businesses and shops and so forth that are not cookie-cutter chains. I love the way that these businesses seem to collect their own character over time, and I also like the wild and diverse ways that small business owners present themselves. I spotted this wild conjunction of brightly painted colors as I walked along 24th street in the Mission District of San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon. In this version of the photograph (yes, there is another) I framed a small section of the building wall closely to try to fill the frame with these colors.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Old and dilapidated garage doors and “no parking” sign in afternoon light on Virgil Street, San Francisco, California.
This seems like a photograph that most people would not identify with San Francisco. If anything, it first appears to be some sort of rural image, perhaps a rustic old barn on a ranch or similar. However, this shot was made along a narrow alley in the Mission District of San Francisco. (Again, as in the “yellow building” photo I posted recently, I suppose I could be accused of attempting to make the Mission not look like the Mission!)
The light was changeable and from time to time beautiful on this afternoon. While it was a cloudy day and mostly somewhat gray, the clouds were thin and broken enough that occasionally soft and diffused light would break through. Here that light brings a bit of relief to the complex and rich textures of this very old and very run-down garage wall and door – and that little bit of green at the lower left softens the whole thing just a bit.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Dormant winter ferns against a decaying log, Yosemite Valley, California.
The story behind finding this little bit of landscape is perhaps best not fully told – but I’ll share little background. I had driven west along Northside Drive in Yosemite Valley in the morning looking for bits of interesting light that can crop up even in the middle of the day during winter in that deep canyon. I had just made some photographs of the Cathedral Rocks area and decided it was time to move on. As I wandered back to the car I decided to, uh, “take a short walk into the woods” on the other side of the road. While there I noticed that some interesting dry ferns were peeking up from under the melting snow, so I decide to look around a bit more in this rather nondescript bit of forest. I finally found one little cluster of ferns that were arranged against the backdrop of an old decaying log and decided to make a few photographs of it before heading back to the car and moving on.
I like several things about this photograph, but among them is the fact that it isn’t an obvious “Yosemite photo” at all. In fact, you could find a similar sort of subject in any number of places if you just look carefully enough – which in Yosemite often means looking away from those iconic and quite obvious subjects from time to time.
(And, yes, it was intentional that I posted this photographic “homage” on February 20, the birthday of Ansel Adams. :-)
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
keywords: yosemite, national, park, valley, california, usa, north america, nature, winter, fern, plant, foliage, leaf, branch, log, wood, decay, texture, black and white, monochrome, forest, stock, curve, pattern
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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