Tag Archives: afternoon

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pedestrians, Lexington Avenue

Leave a comment
Pedestrians, Lexington Avenue
Pedestrians cast shadows as they walk past reflecting windows on a Lexington Avenue sidewalk, Manhattan

Pedestrians, Lexington Avenue. Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pedestrians cast shadows as they walk past reflecting windows on a Lexington Avenue sidewalk, Manhattan

I think that so-called street photography (which might be termed “urban landscape” photography) can do many things. Some try to constrain it, offering limiting definitions that call for monochrome, handheld cameras, photographs featuring people, and a certain direct approach to dystopian unpleasantness. While it can be that, it can be other things, too. The focus can be the light, the geometry, the individual and collective people, oddities, visual beauty, the constructed environment, and much, much more. And (despite this example!) there is nothing requiring it to be black and white and look like it was created with the photographic technologies of any particular era.

In this case, my thoughts were mostly about shapes and light when I made this photograph. (That doesn’t mean that we aren’t free to make other associations.) On this date, close to the winter solstice, the light shines obliquely up streets like this one in Manhattan, and because this section of Lexington is relatively wide and in an area with few really tall buildings, quite a bit of that light finds its way down to the street and sidewalk. As I walked into this light, I was looking for certain effects that are mostly found in such urban environments, especially the multi-directional light produced when the direct sunlight combines with light reflected from buildings and windows.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Back-lit Trees and Ridges

2 Comments
Back-lit Trees and Ridges
Low, late afternoon sun back-lights autumn aspen trees and receding ridges, Eastern Sierra Nevada

Back-lit Trees and Ridges. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 8, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low, late afternoon sun back-lights autumn aspen trees and receding ridges, Eastern Sierra Nevada

What can I say? I love back-light! The more difficult the light, the more I like it. Often I shoot almost directly into the sun when it is low in the sky, especially when there is some haze that makes the atmosphere appear to glow. (I’ve become adept at shading the lens from the direct light — using my hand, my hat, or anything else handy to try to prevent lens flare and reduce the hazy quality that comes when this light is directly on the lens.) The kind of light I’m looking for is the sort that is too bright to look at.

We arrived at this location late in the day, as per my plan. I know it well enough to recognize that the light can become quite interesting just before the sun drops behind mountains to the west. For a short time the light slants across the landscape, almost parallel to the slope of the land as it drops to the east. This produces that glow I mentioned, it accentuates the atmospheric recession effect, and the leaves of trees can glow with the light coming from behind. For this photograph I found a spot where lines of colorful aspens crossed the frame from bottom to about half way up, and then ridges continued the pattern until the final pattern with its row of conifer trees.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Summer, Sierra River

Leave a comment
Summer, Sierra River
The Tuolumne river flows past forest and granite outcroppings on a summer afternoon.

Summer, Sierra River. Yosemite National Park, California. July 13, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Tuolumne river flows past forest and granite outcroppings on a summer afternoon.

This is a sort of “Sierra dreaming” photograph — a scene from last summer, of the sort that I’m looking forward to experiencing again this coming season. It is also a bit of a distraction from the fact that circumstances (nothing bad, just busy-ness and a deadline) have kept me away from the Sierra recently and will probably do so for another month of so. (Though I am sure that this particular spot, photographed in mid-July during a drought year, may look quite a bit different on that date this year!)

Many Sierra Nevada photographs focus on the monumental and spectacular — and for good reason. There are plenty of spectacular and monumental things in the range! But after many decades of wandering around these mountains I find that more and more it is more subtle features that define the experience for me and which draw me back again. This season I have started to see the reports of those venturing very early into the back-country, and each time I see another photograph of a bit of rocky trail, a path through forest, or a fast-flowing creek, it brings back my own memories of many such places — memories that go beyond the mere visual qualities to include sounds of water and rock, the fragrance of the trees, and the feeling of the breeze. Humor me with this somewhat unspectacular photograph of a place that isn’t special enough to be named — it, too, brings back almost all of those associations!

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shop Window, Shadows

Leave a comment
Shop Window, Shadows
Afternoon sun casts shadows on display in a shop window

Shop Window, Shadows. Pasadena, California. January 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon sun casts shadows on display in a shop window

We headed to Southern California just after the New Year. It was an excuse to take the Pacific Coast Highway down the California coast — we were fortunate to do this before winter storms forced a long-term closure! — and to visit various family members. Between the scheduled events we wandered a bit and visited whatever nearby thing seemed interesting.

We spent this afternoon wandering downtown Pasadena. It was a fairly lazy day — we had the afternoon pretty much free, with nothing on the calendar but an evening get-together. I made this photograph as the low-angle afternoon winter light slanted across the street and through the windows of this store to produce complex patterns of reflections, text, and the store’s interior.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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