Category Archives: Photographs: Urban/Street

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

6th Avenue At Night

Image January 12, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

6th Avenue at 26th street, photographed at night from a Manhattan hotel.

Hotel rooms in big urban centers may offer interesting perspectives for photography.(If you get lucky! If you get that room where the window faces… the elevator shaft, not so much. We have gotten lucky a few times. One memorable occasion was in Paris. We went to our room on a lower floor of our Montemartre hotel… to discover cigarette smoke wafting through the room and someone else’s unpacked baggage. We went back down to the desk, where the horrified employee immediately upgraded us to a top floor room… from which I was able to photograph the Eifel tower across a foreground of Paris rooftops.

We didn’t have that sort of luck on our recent December 2019 visit to Manhattan, but our 20th story room did offer an interesting view of the night action along a section of 6th Avenue that ran past the hotel. Shot without a tripod, I simply used a high ISO and lightly braced the camera agains the window to get sufficient stability for the shot.

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: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Manhattan Food Cart

Image January 9, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A couple of people ordering after dark at a Manhattan food cart.

Most New York visitors have some story they can tell about being “taken” but a street vendor — at least they do if they actually go out and wander the streets of Manhattan. Mine is actually pretty tame, but it is instructional nonetheless. About two decades ago we visited with our kids and (if I remember correctly) on the first day we wandered out towards Madison Square Gardens and its transportation hub. I decided that I wanted bagels (or was it pretzels?) for everyone, so I walked up and said something like, “I’ll take five.” I was handed five and then informed that they would be something like $5 each. Twenty years ago. Lesson learned: sort out the price first! (I can tell a similar story about fresh apricots in Heidelberg…)

That aside, there is something attractive about these stands — in the same way the county fair food booths are attractive if you are in the right frame of mind. I find them even more interesting at twilight or after dark, when their flamboyant lighting casts a right of light outwards onto the sidewalk. (One son who lives in Manhattan tells me, “You know dad, that might not be the best Philly cheesesteak you’ll even have.”)

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

Smoke Shop

Image January 5, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Night photograph of a man approaching the Millennium Smoke Shop in Lower Manhattan.

We were in New York City for most of the final week of 2019. There is a lot to see and do there, and walking is one of our favorite Manhattan activities. (Even in winter weather, though we were lucky that it wasn’t utterly frigid on this visit… unlike the last time we visited in winter.) So we walked. A lot. Twice we walked more or less from midtown all the way to Lower Manhattan, though on the day I made this photograph we did use the subway to head back uptown after dark.

Urban night photography with handheld cameras (a.k.a. “night street photography”) has become a bit of a passion of mine over that past few years. Night lends a mysterious atmosphere to otherwise mundane scenes, the darkness can hide many visual distractions, and the pools of light from businesses create points of luminous focus.

Update: After sharing this photograph I thought about it a bit more and came to the conclusion that there is another possible interpretation of the scene. I created a different version that I’ll share in the coming days.

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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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