Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Stairwell, Winter Shadows

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Stairwell, Winter Shadows
Shadows of bare winter trees on windows in a Metropolitan Museum stairwell.

Stairwell, Winter Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Shadows of bare winter trees on windows in a Metropolitan Museum stairwell.

This is perhaps a bit of a mind game of a photograph. I’ll explain why in a moment. I made it while visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on a cold winter day last December. We were there mainly to see the David Hockney exhibit and then, once we realized what it was, the remarkable Michelangelo exhibit nearby. It is also true that we were there on that particular day partly because that was when we happened to be in New York, partly because we wanted to see the exhibits, and partly because it was a freezing cold day! For visitors to New York City in winter, the museums are good options when it is just plain too cold for a lot of outdoor stuff. (Nonetheless, we still did do a lot of walking in this frigid weather.)

This little corner of the museum is at the end of a series of galleries where an open stairway connects several floors together. There are windows, but they are covered with a sort of fabric scrim that allows diffused light to enter, blocks views of the outdoor landscape, but does project the shadows of nearby trees. The bare, winter branches silhouetted on this window and others nearby caught my attention. But the more I looked the more I saw the almost bizarre and perspective-defying combination of lines from the angled wall, the floor and handrail, and more. In the end, this photograph is perhaps of several things, but also about the strange conjunction of their forms.

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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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Door

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Red Door
Weathered red door and wall, Lower Manhattan

Red Door. G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered red door and wall, Lower Manhattan

Yes, I’m a sucker for doors, weathered stuff, and bright colors. During the last week of 2017 we were in New York City, staying in Lower Manhattan and traveling all over from there, at times getting to Brooklyn and Queens. While those longer forays involved subway and cars, we also walked… a lot. New York City is, or at least can be, quite a walking city. I recall the first time I visited as an adult, and being surprised to find that people walked much more there than in California where I live. Having said that, walking there in winter can be a bit daunting, though it didn’t stop us. For most of our visit New York was in the grip of a cold spell, with daytime temperatures only making it into the lower 20 degree range, and on some days not “warming” up even that much. We found that we could bundle up, try to avoid windy spots, walk briskly, and when we got too cold… duck into a coffee shop or restaurant to warm back up.

I made this photograph on one of these walks. The specific location seems unimportant, but it wasn’t too far from Wall Street — though this scene hardly looks like it comes from a financial center! We headed north on a meandering path that took us east of Wall Street and away from the main, busy area. I was in street photographer mode, working a small camera with a single small prime lens, so I made the photograph more or less “on the move,” likely pausing only a few seconds to squeeze off a couple of frames before continuing to walk.

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: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

W!

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W!
“W!” — Colorful painting and graffiti on metal door, New York City

Continuing my current pattern of wild back-and-forth swings among subjects, today I retreat from the foggy California wetlands and head back to New York City for some wild color. There’s nothing in the photograph to let you know this, but it was a bitterly cold winter day when I made the photograph. Almost nothing stops me from walking with my camera when I visit New York, though the 20 degree (and colder!) temperatures and biting winds did their best on this day. We started walking in Lower Manhattan, near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal (a very windy place!) and headed uptown on a somewhat random path. The route took us through some places you might not bother to visit on a tourist trip to the city, but it did turn up subjects like this intense example of street art painted on the roll-up door of a small business. If memory serves, this was the day that we finally made it to Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant. As we walked and got colder and colder, the thought of borscht and other goodies became more and more attractive. Veselka did not disappoint.

About this photograph and its dissonance with other work I post, such as wilderness landscapes, seascapes, and migratory birds. I know that some photographers prefer to focus on a particular range of subjects. (There are fine reasons for making that choice, in fact.) But I have at least a couple of reasons for photographing a wider range of subjects. First, I come from a background in music, where the idea of performing only one style of music (say, Baroque trio sonatas) all the time seems incredibly constraining — so seeking out a wider range seems nature to me. Second, I like to think that these different subjects are still united by whatever it is that constitutes my way of seeing… and that there might be a bit of the landscape photographer in the city and a bit of the street photographer in the landscape work.

TWO

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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Ghost Towns, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned Mill

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Abandoned Mill
The ruins of an abandoned mill in the desert backcountry

Abandoned Mill. Desert Mountains, California. April 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The ruins of an abandoned mill in the California desert backcountry

During the nearly twenty years since I first “discovered” California deserts, my experience with them has changed. To be honest, as a person largely focused on the coast and the Sierra, when I was younger I didn’t really know much about these wild places, and I wasn’t really attracted to them. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that I actually made a serious visit and began to “get it” about the things that make these areas so marvelous. At first, like almost anyone else, I focused on some of the most obvious and iconic places. But eventually as I returned to these places, especially to Death Valley National Park, I began to push out my boundaries bit by bit. As I did so I discovered many more interesting things about these places, both the natural wilderness and the human history. One of the first experiences that connected me to the human history was an accident. One evening I wandered away from a camp and just sat down on a boulder in an elevated location on an alluvial fan. I happened to look down to see an unusual rock. I picked it up and quickly realized that it was a cutting implement left their by the earliest people to make their lives here — and my notions of the depth and variety of human experience in the desert was profoundly altered.

That human influence has many facets. Certainly the experience of the people we now refer to as “native Americans” is central. (I like Canada’s term: “first people.”) Later settlers showed up for a range of reasons — pioneers passing through, prospectors chasing the dream of the big strike, folks looking for a job, people not well suited to living in the civilized world, and other. They all left traces. The prospectors and miners left lots of them all over the desert landscape, and you can’t travel around these places without running into it. The photograph is a detail from one amazing structure high on a desert ridge, abandoned only recently in the context of the larger scale of history, but still putting us in touch with an era that is mostly gone now from these places.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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