Blue Water, Blue Sky, Boat. San Francisco, California. June 13, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Blue light and morning haze over San Francisco Bay
I’m channeling the blue in this photograph, shot along the San Francisco waterfront earlier this month. The facts are straightforward — I was walking along the San Francisco Bay waterfront early in the morning, as I like to do during the summer. There was some morning haze above the bay, left over from the dissipating fog, and it took on a blue coloration from the sky. Across the bay the giant cranes of the Port of Oakland are visible along the East Bay shoreline, nearer a boat passes near the end of breakwater.
I think that some people might wonder at all the city photographs, especially since so much of my photograph is of the natural world — the coast, the Sierra, migratory birds, the desert. I photograph the city for quite a few reasons. For one, it is closer than some of those other subjects, and at a minimum photographing in the city give me a chance to keep my eye “in tune.” In some ways, urban shooting can do more for this than more photography of the natural world, since the urban environment often presents such simplified forms and because I often have to work quickly and rely on (and thereby reinforce) my visual instincts. In addition, I just have to admit that there is a part of me that likes the urban world with its intense and compressed experiences. (Not that this photograph shows that part of it!)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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