Tag Archives: wrought iron

Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shadows, Ponte Dei Carmini

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Shadows, Ponte Dei Carmini
“Shadows, Ponte Dei Carmini” — Light and shadows on buildings at the Ponte Dei Carmini, Venice.

This photograph from Venice embodies many of the features that I expect to see in that part of the world. The Southern European light? Yes. Wrought iron work? Check. Earth tone colors on the buildings? Indeed. Narrow walkways? For sure. Of course, the venetian-style canals — not visible in this photo — are not quite so ubiquitous.

I’ll share a little technical note about this photograph. Cameras cannot really produce a native image that shows us details in both the very bright highlights (direct sunlight) and deep shadows. (Our eyes deal with this by quickly adapting to the brightness at the center of our attention.) So with digital photography our first priority is to protect those bright highlights — let them get out of control and you’ll lose highlight details completely. The subsequent post-processing task is then to brighten details in the shadows to restore what we think we saw when we looked at the scene. The trick is to do that in a manner that doesn’t give it away, one that doesn’t make the technique too obvious

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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: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Steps, Red Door In Sun

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Steps, Red Door In Sun
Manhattan residence building with steps and a sunlit red door

Steps, Red Door In Sun. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Manhattan residence building with steps and a sunlit red door

It is hard to resist a red door in morning sunlight. :-) The photograph comes from 2014, on one of our frequent visits to New York City to visit family, eat a lot of food, and do street photography. When in New York (and sometimes other boroughs including Brooklyn and Queens) we walk a lot. We’ve been known to walk into Manhattan from Brooklyn, or walk all the way up from the lower end of Manhattan to and into Central Park.

While I don’t recall the specifics of this photograph (though I think I have a general sense of where we were) I know we were out for one of those walks. I’m also pretty certain that this was more or less a quick shot as we walked past this little residential area. The reason this photograph show up now is one of those serendipitous stories. A week or two ago someone asked me a slightly technical photography question. I thought that I might be able to illustrate an answer by using an urban photograph made with a somewhat wide-angle lens, so I began to wade back into older New York photographs to see what I could find. In the end I never used any of them to respond to the question, but I did find a set of four-year-old raw files that I must have neglected to consider at the time.

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.

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

Templo la Hermosa

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Templo la Hermosa

Templo la Hermosa. San Jose, California. January 4, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Front doors and entrance of Templo la Hermosa de los Asembleas de Dios, San Jose, California.

Very late in the day, as the low sunlight hit the front of this rather plain brick church near the train station in down town San Jose head on, I walked past and noticed the very thick arch and old wooden doors, along with the bushes casting shadows on the front of the entry.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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