Category Archives: Photographs: Travel

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Mirrored Street Scene

Image January 14, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Manhattan winter street scene mirrored in building windows.

One thing I enjoy about street photography is that often — though not always, believe it or not — tends to work quite differently than my landscape photography. When things start to happen, they often happen very quickly, and there can be so much to sort out quickly that it may almost be overwhelming. And there are plenty of missed opportunities — despite the fact that I know that I often can’t wait for a thing to happen. That would be too late, so often I have to photograph almost speculatively, preparing for what may happen as much as responding to what is happening.

There’s a lot of those things in this photograph, made on a recent winter visit to Manhattan. When I’m in “”photographer mode” there I usually have a small rangefinder-style camera out and held down low in one hand, ready to quickly raise it and make a photograph. Sometimes there isn’t even time to bring the viewfinder to my eye, and I photograph blind. That wasn’t the case with this photograph, though I did have to work pretty quickly. I think that I noticed the colorful umbrella on the food cart at almost the same moment that I realized the the windows produced an almost-mirror image of the scene, and then I had just time to start photographing as the two colorfully-dressed people walked toward me. It wasn’t until after the shot that I started to see other interesting form and color relationships and more.

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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Window, MOMA

Image January 4, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A window at the Museum of Modern Art, Manhattan.

Virtually every New York City involves a visit to one or more Manhattan museums. On this visit we spent a morning at the Frick Collection and a half of a day at the recently remodeled/updated Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). My reasons for visiting museums often go beyond the obvious one — seeing the collection — and include photographing people and architecture. For years I have been attracted to these exterior windows at MOMA, both for their views of Manhattan and for their own intrinsic opportunities to photograph form, light, color, and sometimes people.

About MOMA… the recent expansion and update has gotten a lot of attention, and one reason we chose to visit was that this was our first opportunity to see the changes. Mostly I think they are fine and even positive. But based on this one visit (admittedly during a holiday peak period) I have a concern: it was so incredibly crowded that in some cases the experience was seriously degraded. In some rooms the crowds were so thick that it was literally impossible to move at times. There’s a ton of wonderful work at MOMA and it is worth visiting… but try to go at a less-busy time if at all possible.

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

Chinatown Store At Night

Image November 15, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A woman walks past a San Francisco Chinatown District store at night.

My original idea was to render this as a color photograph, largely because the wild and bright colors in these stores attract me to the subject. But as I worked with the image in post it kept whispering, “I want to be monochrome…” In the end I decided to agree with that little voice. I like the noire quality of black and white in this case, and it also takes me back to my roots, when my early photography was all black and white… and done with film.

A photograph like this one poses several challenges, ranging from aesthetic to technical. The fill list of them is too long to treat fully in this post, but I’ll share a few. An aesthetic challenge comes from trying to include moving figures in such night photographs — both due to the difficulty in stopping their motion in low light, and because such figures don’t always appear in the. scene. My approach is often to find the “landscape” first and then wait for the “wildlife” (people) to arrive and populate the scene. It often requires both patience and multiple photographs to get it to work, and it doesn’t always succeed. The technical challenges are mostly about light. There are quite a few, but I’ll just mention some related to dynamic range and the locations of light sources. The brightest light in this scene is obviously coming from the bright interior of the store. But much of the scene is actually in near darkness, and the human subjects are mostly backlit. There is just a bit of ambient light coming from the lights on nearby businesses, but it isn’t nearly as strong as that coming from the shop. So I expose for that brightest source, with the intention of restoring shadow details in post. That isn’t always easy, but today’s cameras give us a ton of latitude for removing shadow detail.

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

Souvenir Shop, Night

Image November 11, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People in front of a colorful Chinatown souvenir shop at night, San Francisco.

A few years ago I began to photograph in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. At first the visits were simply connected to my street photography visits to The City, as this area happens to be on my route between several other areas I also photograph. As a Bay Area person I have visiting this spot for decades and, frankly, mostly regarded it as a tourist area. (In fact, portions of the “main drag” though the area do have largely that quality.) But eventually several things began to change my sense of the area. The first was deciding to not just walk the main tourist route, but to go a few blocks to either side. Second was to go there at the non-tourist times, for example in the early morning, when a walk along Stockton Street is a very different experience. Third was to photograph at night.

The first time I did the latter in this area was a few years back when some night photography friends suggested that we meet up for dinner there and then spend the evening photographing. I was entranced by the effect of the colorful lighting spilling onto the narrow streets and sidewalks, something that makes night photography a more viable option than on typical wide American urban streets. At about the same time I was introduced to Manhattan’s Chinatown district — a place that is both different from and similar to this San Francisco area — and I began to photograph both of them.

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