Category Archives: Photographs: Urban/Street

Photographs: England, Photographs: People, Photographs: Urban/Street

London Street Market

August 17, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A London street market near closing time.

This is another photograph made in the narrow streets along the south side of the Thames river roughly in the area of the Millennium and Southwark Bridges, where we found ourselves with some time to kill late one afternoon. As we walked around with no firm plan in mind we came to a location where a street market was just closing, and the many vendors were making their final sales of the day and starting to close up shop.

Visually this was an absolutely compelling place to photograph, though I’m not at all sure I was able to do it justice – and I would go back given the chance. The many stalls selling almost anything you can imagine created their own interest; the place was packed with people shopping or just walking through on their way to some other place. And being under a bridge and in places in old buildings with lots of glass above, the light was truly wonderful. I spent perhaps a half hour walking through the area, shooting like crazy, and I especially liked the spots like this one where I could position myself in shadow and shoot directly toward the late afternoon light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.

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: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Crowd in Tunnel

August 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A crowd of tourists walks through a brick tunnel in London, England

With this photograph I move in the street photography direction – and there are plenty of options to shoot such subjects in London. We had gone south across the Thames for some afternoon and evening “business” and we ended up walking around a bit between business A and business B, more or less wandering with the crowd through busy, narrow streets in this popular area. (I have been told that it wasn’t all that long ago that this was not nearly such a busy place, but that recent development, perhaps encouraged by the success of the New Globe Theater, has really changed the character of the place.) This gave me quite an opportunity to put my small Fujifilm X-E1 camera through its paces, as it is a small, rangefinder-style camera that brings to mind cameras typically used for this sort of photography in the past.

This photograph may not be everyone’s, uh, cup of tea – at least for those who might be more interested in my nature and landscape photography – but there are some things that I like about it quite a bit. To my eye, there are some very interesting things about the light. The distance area outside the tunnel is in full sun and is very bright, to the point that it almost over-exposed and its light spills over into the darker tunnel. This also backlights the people in the tunnel, though those closer to me pick up a bit of light from the other end of the tunnel behind my shooting position, and the shadows of the people on the shiny cobblestone create rays that spread across the lower part of the frame. I also like the sort of v-shape formed by the people at the instant I shot this, with what appears to be a family in the center and front and in slightly better light. There is, for me at least, a bit of humor, too – think about a comparison between the child at the very bottom of the frame and his concentration on his hands… and the man with the cell phone and his very similar focus.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Roofs of Heidelberg

July 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As seen from the tower of the Heiliggeistkirche, the rooftops of the Heidelberg Altstadt extend into the distance

Heidelberg is a city with a very long history, and a lot of this history seems to be maintained in the altstadt or “old town” section of the city, where most buildings are quite old and some date back many centuries, where streets are pre-automobile narrow, and where you can find a combination of small shops, old churches, university buildings, places to eat, and – of course – tourist attractions.

I made this photograph from the tower of the Holy Ghost Church (Heiliggeistkirche), a structure that dominates the view of the old town area and which is located across the street from the historic Ritter Hotel. The interior of the church is also impressive, and I’ll have some photographs of that a bit later. We paid the 1 euro donation to climb the many twisting steps to the walkway far up the church’s tower, from which a spectacular 360 degree view of the city, the Neckar River, and the surrounding hills is seen. I spent quite a long time up there, watching for good moments in the soft light, and making photographs of the city from this high vantage point. This view looks across the altstadt along the path of the Neckar as is leaves this valley and heads towards the valley of the Rhein.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Walking Man, Blue Building

July 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A man walks into the sun in front of a blue building, San Francisco, California

This building is, indeed, very blue. I passed it in the low angle morning light shortly after getting off the Caltrain and starting to walk up into the City. The area along Fourth Street seems to change each time I visit and the balance between very funky old businesses and so forth versus newer and slightly hipper stuff continues to shift toward the latter. I’m not sure what this building is, but I’m pretty certain that it is no longer some sort of garage or mechanical shop.

The first thing that caught my attention about this building was, no surprise, the blue color. I thought about how I could arrange the components of the shot to include only blue and white elements, but given the lens I was working with and a few other factors, that wasn’t possible – so there is a bit of brick wall at the upper right intruding into the blue sky. I’m starting to like it. Two other things that I saw here were the angled shadow and the trash collection bins. The two of them and the square shadow on the roll-up door seem to create a sort of pattern, and the walking person – also in a dark jacket and with a shadow, seems to bisect the space between the far right shadow and the middle bin. Without the figure, the shot didn’t seem all that interesting to me, so I employed a technique I often use when shooting urban subjects like this: compose and wait for something/someone to walk into the frame.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Urban/Street

London Street Market

Crowd in Tunnel

Roofs of Heidelberg

Walking Man, Blue Building

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