This is another Portland, Oregon photograph, though there’s not much in it to specifically connect to that city — you could find buildings like this in any number of cities in the US.
My recollection — and it has been a few years — is that I made this photograph by aiming toward the window of a business, most likely a restaurant, and catching the reflection of the building in the windows. But the reflection was still semi-transparent, so the face on the interior display ended up seeming to float across the surface of the building — a sort of “Photoshop in the flesh” effect.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A partially updated bamboo fence, Portland, Oregon
Seems like I still have one more photograph from our 2012 visit to the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon. We were there on a family visit and I was traveling light when it came to photography, taking only a single camera and one lens. A bit to my surprise, it turned out that we had some good photographic opportunities, so I made the best of the minimal gear.
The garden of course features beautifully arranged and managed plant life, but it also includes a lot of structures, ranging from small buildings to bridges and fences and benches and more. The form of this fence attracted me — I do like geometry! But I was also intrigued by the juxtaposition of new and old sections of the fence, a reminder that such things are not static but rather in a state of continual change.
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.
A man works in the display window of the Asian Ambiance shop, next to the Francisco Aquino’s Ross Alley 1889 Mural
When shooting at night — and, frankly, often when shooting during the day — I may photograph a scene, feeling that something about it “works,” but not knowing quite why in then sense that I could explain why I’m making the photograph. I frequently work quite intuitively, even though I’m very aware of my surroundings and fully engaged with them. This is one of those photographs.
I think I first simply thought the light spilling out of the colorful windows of the shop was interesting. As I walked over for a closer look I saw the man working intently on something in the window — perhaps repairing some sort of security shutter. I think I may have been aware of the pool of light on the sidewalk, and I soon noticed the mural to the left. (I later looked it up and found out that it has been there for a while and is far more than random graffiti.) As I quickly framed up a photograph, hoping the man would not move, I thought about the edges of the frame and the position of the lamp at the right become an important consideration. The title, of course, is simply the name of the shop.
People in front of a San Francisco storefront at night
At about this time last year I made an important “discovery during a trip to Manhattan” — with newer cameras I can photograph at high enough ISOs that it is possible (and even easy) to do handheld night street photography. And since I use a small mirrorless camera for street photography, I can even do this sort of photography without carrying around a big camera and lenses. I’ve long been a night photographer, but generally the type to sets up a tripod and approaches this genre more or less the same way I approach landscape photography, but with longer exposures. Much longer! But this new development is tremendously liberating. Using a large aperture prime I can walk around and spontaneously respond to what I see, and I can capture brief and ephemeral moments in the wild and beautiful light of the urban night.
This photograph exemplifies one way that I’ve always shot street photography, though now adapted to the night. I begin by finding an interesting bit of urban landscape — buildings, light, color, texture, form. I find a composition that will work… and then I wait. Sometimes the wait is brief and sometimes it is long. I wait for people to populate this “landscape,” and to ideally configure themselves into some interesting combination. Since I don’t pose these photographs, I have to react quickly and take whatever the street serves up. This time it served up something special, I think. The storefront itself first got my attention, with its brightly colored merchandise, the light spilling out onto the sidewalk, the aqua windows on the left margin, and the red and yellow vending machine on the right. The small group of people just to the right of the doorway were my first target, and I think I have a photograph of just them taken shortly before this one. But very soon a wonderful and unpredictable conjunction occurred as the man walked out through the store doorway, the woman in blue passed in front of the vending machine, and the two men with the crying child in a stroller passed the store, followed by the woman with the bag.
