Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Winter Light and Cross Walks

February 17, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter backlight illuminates pedestrians and cross walks in Manhattan

People in cross walks seems to be becoming a bit of a theme here. I think that a reason may be that people tend to stay more or less in one place a bit longer while waiting to cross and their paths are more constrained while crossing the street. On top of that, encountering the temporary end of the sidewalk at a street corner does tend to face people into groups, and once the light changes they retain some connection to the group for a moment.

A few other factors appealed to me in this scene, and it wasn’t just the people. The light was wonderful, low winter light coming up the street from Lower Manhattan, and impossible to keep its sources out of the camera’s field of view in this shot. That produced the soft glare of light in front of the buildings on the right and it backlit the figures and case long shadows. Those shadows cross perpendicular to the light-colored lines of the cross walk, with become wider as they get closer to my camera position.

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

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles

February 16, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Man in vest and helmet emerges from Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles, Inc.

This is another quite street photography photograph made in Manhattan, almost certainly along the edges of its Chinatown district. On the scale from instant and intuitive to slow and methodical, this photograph fits in the former category. I think I recall stopping for no longer than a few seconds to photograph this place, and timing a couple of the exposures to include this fellow coming out through the door. Once he was out of the picture my interest waned and we moved on.

Of course the name of the business caught my attention — not just “Noodles” or that word plus someone’s name, but “Tasty, hand-pulled noodles, Inc.”, and on a shop that wasn’t, well, very pretentious. The fellow coming out the door was wearing one of those bright orange reflective vests and a bicycle helmet. I saw no bicycle nearby, but perhaps he was a messenger. Not clear from the photograph, unless you notice how much clothing he is wearing, is that he was apparently out on a bicycle on a day when the temperature barely reached twenty degrees and the wind was blowing strongly.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Land And Sea

February 15, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Big Sur coast meets the Pacific Ocean

I live close enough to the Big Sur coastline that I can visit on day trips, and I can visit at times when it is relatively quiet and uncrowded. A winter weekday can be ideal, and right now it is even less busy since the route is still blocked by a giant landscape perhaps fifty miles or so below the Monterey Peninsula.

Most often I prefer to photograph fairly early in the morning, when the light skims down across the coastal hills, creating patterns of shadow and light, or else in the evening, when the warm light of the late-day sun colors the ocean and the hills. But on some almost perfectly clear winter days, perhaps with a few high clouds and some atmospheric haze, the air almost glows and I can photograph right through the middle of the day. This was such a day. The haze and mist, partly atmospheric and party from spray thrown up by surf, accentuated the bluffs and headlands as they dropped into the Pacific, and the brilliant sun made the water so bright that it was difficult to look at it.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Killdeer

February 14, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A killdeer along the edge of a pond

I’m increasingly interested in little birds like this killdeer, even though they may not seem so “special” due to their small size and appearance almost anywhere you might go. Heck, you could photograph a lot of birds like this one by going no further than your own backyard or a nearby park.

What they lack in “spectacular-ness,” they (sometimes more than) make up for in personality, not to mention that it is often possible to get quite close to them and observe them for a long time. This killdeer was content to go about its business less than ten feet from me as I quietly photographed from a position that partially hid me. It hopped, it fed, it flew a short distance, it turned around — all in all, it was quite adept at posing. It also is a rather attractive bird once you watch it a bit, especially with those interesting stripes of black and white on the head and neck, plus that subtle margin of striking red around the deep black eyes.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Winter Light and Cross Walks

Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles

Land And Sea

Killdeer

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