Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

Red Storefront With Mural

February 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red doors and window frames and brightly painted mural on a New York shop

Given the date, I suppose that this is a sort of Christmas photograph! We had arrived in New York the evening before, and while we had Christmas plans in Brooklyn, those were scheduled for much later in the day, so we ended up out and about in Lower Manhattan on a cold Christmas morning. Initially we headed south toward the financial district and the World Trade Center site – where it seemed that pretty much the only people around were our fellow tourists.

We finished up there and decided to head back to the hotel for a bit before going to Brooklyn. Starting this day and continuing throughout our weeklong stay, this small food stand became something of an icon, as we walked past it on the way to and from our Canal Street hotel daily. Oddly, when the place was closed it was at its most visually interesting, with a roll up door that had been painted brightly with the images of cars as you see here. The whole thing was behind an exterior set of glass windows/doors, the frame of which was painted the most gaudy shade of red imaginable.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Garbage Man Gate

February 1, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sheet metal fence, roll-up door, trash, and hand-written message to the garbage man, Brooklyn

“Please close and lock this gage. Garbage man”

I know this will baffle a few readers… but there you go. I’m tempted to offer little explanation and let you make of it what you will. This small vignette comes from a semi-industrial area beneath a bridge in a section of Brooklyn, New York. Is that cryptic enough? ;-)

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Memorial Pool

January 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Memorial pool at the National September 11 Memorial, New York City.

It is hard to know precisely what or how to write about this place as it evokes so many responses of all different sorts. On that September day over a decade ago we were on the opposite coast, watching the events unfold as if in a dream. A year and a half earlier we had stood on top of these buildings at night. Since then my oldest son has moved to New York and now works within a very short distance of this place. Our first visit to the site was a few years ago, when almost all original traces of the September 11 events were gone (though if you looked closely you could see chips and cracks in places), and it had become an incredibly busy construction site, with more cranes than I had ever seen in one place and with the new tower climbing skyward. It was hard to connect what we saw on that visit to what had occurred – until we walked around a corner and saw a memorial to firefighters from the closest fire station.

This time we first walked here on Christmas morning. We didn’t pick that day for any particular reason except that we were not far away and it seemed like a place that we wanted to visit. We walked down, looked up at the new tower through trees, and walked back. The next day we wanted to visit the Memorial, so we returned and stood in the lines with thousands of other people in freezing weather as light snow flurries fell. Once there I knew I wanted to photograph, but I didn’t want to intrude on anyone else, so I photographed things more than people in the flat, cloudy light. This photograph includes a bit of one of the pools, where water that has just fallen down the upper walls, leaving ice behind on this cold day, pauses momentarily before continuing its descent into the center void of the memorial.

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

Ding

January 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A pedestrian walks past a New York City post office building.

An apology might be appropriate for this photograph, which might be the oddest Christmas Day photograph of 2013. We had arrived in New York City the previous evening, and when we woke up on Christmas morning in Manhattan things were relatively quiet. We had an afternoon engagement in Brooklyn, but plenty of morning time to kill before that, so we figured that we might just take a (rather cold) walk deeper into Lower Manhattan, and we ended up heading toward the World Trade Center site.

Because there were so few people – and so few cars – out this morning, certain photographic opportunities arose that might not usually be easy or even possible here. You can bet that on a more typical day this street would have been filled with vehicles and the sidewalk filled with other pedestrians. But on this quiet day it was much easier to photograph unobstructed views or to find an individual figure in this urban landscape. As this man in black strode purposefully (very purposefully for Christmas day!) past this post office building I saw that I might have a brief opportunity to frame him against the architecture of the building and as soon as I saw this particular shot, a little voice in my head said… “Ding!” (Sorry. But probably not sorry enough.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

Red Storefront With Mural

Garbage Man Gate

Memorial Pool

Ding

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.