Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

A Selfie

February 5, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of tourists captures a selfie on the run

A free hour or a bit more, so we took a quick walk out on the Brooklyn Bridge on a cold and windy day that was trying to rain — to join the surprising number of other people with just the same illogical idea. This bridge is a great place from which to watch many things: boats on the east river, the buildings of Lower Manhattan, the Brooklyn waterfront, the bridge itself and, of course, the people walking past by the hundreds or thousands.

The people provide a lot of photographic possibilities, but those possibilities come and go quickly. Our of an amorphous crowd so thick that I can’t see ten feet ahead of me, an interesting subject might suddenly appear. Of someone might do something surprising and interesting, but only for a brief moment. And then there are the selfies… It is no news that they have become a “thing.” The camera/phone is held at a high angle pointing down, and the subjects’ faces are almost invariably tilted up. Participants in the ritual usually lean their heads together and tilt them to one side. And then there is that smile — I wonder sometimes what it is supposed to be: a bit edgy/wry and highly posed. A moment before this group was simply walking towards me like all the other groups, but suddenly a phone came out, the arm went up, the heads turned, and there it was.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Subalpine Lake, Morning Reflections

February 4, 2016 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light and reflections on the rocky shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

A wonderful thing about making photographs is that I get to travel backwards and forwards in time almost at will. Here it is in the middle of winter, and by looking back a few months in my archive I can go right back to a beautiful late summer week spent photographing around a Yosemite subalpine lake with a couple of friends. All of the sensory memories come right back: the stillness of the morning lake as the first sun worked its way through high clouds and haze, the memory of carrying my camera around the perimeter of that lake every morning as I looked slowly of subjects, the first colors of Sierra autumn.

We camped here for a full week, working intensively to photograph in and around one small area. If you haven’t done this you could be forgiven for wondering how in the world one could spend an entire week in area not much larger than a mile or two across. In fact, I still have those doubts at the start of any trip like this. All I can say is that, inevitably, the end of such a week comes too soon, I depart with many things left unphotographed, and I often return to these places again and find even more to see and photograph.

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

Graffiti Covered Wall

February 3, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small portion of a colorful graffiti covered wall, Brooklyn

I used to have a firm policy of virtually never photographing graffiti, and when I couldn’t avoid it I would remove or modify it in post so as to not be part of the sharing that might encourage the sort of graffiti that is really simple vandalism. I still avoid photographing simple “tags” in most cases, especially when they offer little more than the evidence that some anonymous person wrote on a wall. I also have this nagging feeling that photographing graffiti-ridden cityscapes can too easily become a street photography cliché.

However, I’ve become more open to the idea of finding and photographing the accumulative juxtapositions of layers of drawing, painting, posters, and weathering that show up on some urban walls. That’s my way of explaining why I stopped to photograph this Brooklyn wall, moving in close to find compositions among the colors, lines, and shapes that have built up over time and which have been revealed as time has weathered away later layers.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Little Monsters on the Bridge

February 2, 2016 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Little monsters on the bridge

If you wander about in New York City with your eyes open, who knows what you might see? We had an extra hour or so, and since we had been staying nearby for about a week and were only a short walk away, we decided to make a quick amble out onto the Brooklyn Bridge, even though it was cold and raw and trying to rain. The bridge, of course, was crowded with walkers, even in this uncomfortable winter weather. That meant that there were lots of opportunities of people watching and people photographing.

Most people go by so fast that only a quick photograph works, especially when crowds obstruct the view past the closest figures. Oddly, at this spot in the bridge the foot traffic seems to momentarily thin and break, and I could see this small group — perhaps a father and sons? — posing for a rather unusual Brooklyn Bridge photograph. Each of the kids was in a costume and mask of some sort, and the juxtaposition of these “little monsters” with the bridge was a surprise.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

A Selfie

Subalpine Lake, Morning Reflections

Graffiti Covered Wall

Little Monsters on the Bridge

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