Tag Archives: curb

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Three Women, Grant Street

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Three Women, Grant Street
Three women stand in front of a Grant Street storefront at night, San Francisco.

Three Women, Grant Street. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three women stand in front of a Grant Street storefront at night, San Francisco.

At this point I’m not sure I recall the exact circumstances that had me in this part of San Francisco after dark, but from the group of photographs that I have in my archive I can tell that I had made my way to the Chinatown district by evening, and after photographing there headed south past the Moscone Center, all of which suggests I had gone up there and back on the train. Taking the train to San Francisco for a day of street photography has long been a favorite activity, though I think it has now been about two years since the last attempt, aside from a few brief forays when I was up there this past fall for a couple of shows.

This San Francisco district, and others like it, are great places to photograph after dark, especially if you can work quickly, in street photography style, using a small handheld camera. There is often a fair amount of light from the combined sources of street lights, passing traffic, and the often-colorful lights spilling from commercial storefronts. With a small camera, especially at night, I can photograph without being so obvious that I intrude on the scene myself. One theme in my night street photography is people doing seemingly unusual things in a very normal human fashion. This appears to be a group of three friends passing through this area, but pausing to look in an unusual direction for just a moment.

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.

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Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Waiting Man

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Waiting Man
A man stands at the curb with his head bowed, San Francisco.

Waiting Man. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man stands at the curb with his head bowed, San Francisco.

This photograph comes from a day spent doing street photography while walking through San Francisco… just a few short months before our world changed in early 2020 and such activities become difficult, if not impossible. I still photograph “street” a bit in the areas not far from where I live, but I haven’t been back to shoot this way in San Francisco since the “before times” — though I’m starting to imagine being able to do so once again. I did just a bit of this kind of photography when I spent a few days up there during our Open Studio event at a gallery in North Beach, though I’m still distracted by streets full of masked people.

I know that some people wonder why this “nature photographer” wanders off to photograph urban environments, and some are even perplexed by the photographs. There are lots of reasons for a landscape photographer to also be a street photographer. In some ways the genres are complementary, and doing one actually has the potential to improve the other. If nothing else, photographing street can remove the “I don’t have anything to photograph!” excuse, since there’s potentially something right outside your front door. In addition, for photographers who are often more comfortable photographing things than people, this work can be a way to stretch your boundaries.

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.

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Photographs: Urban/Street

Orange F250

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A very orange Ford F250 pickup truck

Orange F250. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A very orange Ford F250 pickup truck.

This photograph is another from the little “orange exercise” that I and a few of my photographer friends engaged in around Halloween. The objects was to… photograph orange things. It turns out that this was a trickier task than I imagined. Because it was Halloween time, a lot of the potential orange subjects seemed a bit obvious. (Not that this entirely kept me from photographing pumpkins…) The surprise to me was that once I started looking for orange… the exact boundaries between orange and various other colors started to become fuzzy. I’d look at something that seemed orange, only to realize that in a different context it might be regarded as yellow or red or brown. There are objective facts about color, but our perception of it is highly subjective!

Having said that, there is no question in my mind that this truck is orange! I used to occasionally see cars painted in colors like this, but today mostly we see some pretty drab colors — generic white, black, gray, silver and similar. Even blue and green are less common than they once were. So this very orange truck caught my attention while I was out walking in the neighborhood. One more thing: perhaps, like me, if you stare at the shape of this vehicle long enough it may start to look really strange…

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.

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

Two Poles, Three Doors

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Two Poles, Three Doors
Two unility poles in front of an abandoned industrial. building with three doors.

Two Poles, Three Doors. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two utility poles in front of an abandoned industrial. building with three doors.

This is another take on a subject that I posted about recently while sharing a portrait-orientation image of much the same scene. Keeping in mind that photographs posted here are often part of my “working out” process with images, trying out different ways of seeing them, here’s a bit of my thinking. In the previous version I chose the alternate orientation in order to include more of that sky (a reference to my landscape photography?) and the full height of the utility poles. This time I left only a sliver of the sky, and you have to imagine how tall the poles are. (That’s an important visual concept about which I could write an article, by the way.) So here, I think, we see the geometries of the structure, the poles, and the slanting shadows more prominently.

In that earlier post I wrote something that wasn’t completely accurate regarding the building. I pointed out accurately that it is in a former produce canning area and that it is no longer part of that industry, but I also stated that it is “abandoned.” Technically, it _was_ abandoned, but it appears that the building is now being used as some sort of warehouse or storage area. Of course, you would not see that from the outside where I was, as there are no commercial markings at all — which is a very unusual thing in this country.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.