Street art in a doorway, bouquet of flowers, London street
It has been a very busy day and another busy day is beginning, so this will be a short post today. As we walked past this spot in London on a summer 2013 visit it seemed that perhaps not everyone had been equally enthusiastic about the Olympic Games coming to London…
Diners at an outdoor eating area at the Getty Center.
This is a photograph from about five years ago, when we spent a rainy and foggy winter day at the Getty Center in Southern California. When one thinks of the Los Angeles area, more typically the thoughts are of sunshine and warm temperatures, but this winter day was not at all like that. It was not warm, and the constant light to moderate rain also included foggy conditions at this ridge-top location. The design of the Getty buildings and the grounds has fascinated me for a long time, and this provided a new way to see the place.
At about the time I made this photograph, quite a few people were seeking shelter from the wind and rain in this outdoor covered courtyard area where the upper room section appears to be supported by tremendously tall and thing columns clad in rock.
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. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
“Umbrellas and Fog” — People with umbrellas walking through a foggy garden
This is a photograph from about five years ago when we made a winter trip to Southern California and ended up spending a day at the Getty Center. Since the time our oldest son went to UCLA I have been a fan of the Center, at least as much for the architecture and the grounds as for the art displays. (The art is wonderful, too, and they have a special focus on photography that often takes me back there.)
This was just the sort of day when normal people might not want to visit the Getty: it was cold and rainy and eventually the rain mixed with fog. I had a wonderful time photographing the fog-obscured architectural landscape and made many photographs with people passing through it. In fact, I came back from this single day of shooting with a group of photographs I like a great deal. At this moment I happened to be in an upper courtyard in a place that overlooks the garden as groups of people carrying umbrellas approached the sharp bend in the walkway from both directions.
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The Cloud Gate sculpture is one of the iconic sights of downtown Chicago, visited by many people and photographed by almost all of them! It stands in an accessible and central section of the lakeside Millennium Park, just across the street from central downtown areas. We wandered past twice on two different days as we walked around this area during our visit. (There are other fascinating public art installations in the surrounding area, too.)
The sculpture is impressive in photographs, but I did not realize how large it is in person. It is remarkable in a number of ways, not the least of which is the effect it has had on the public consciousness. In a purely objective sense, the existence of such a huge, unbroken and curving reflective surface is a marvel. And it is also, to be plain, a lot of fun — it is hard to imagine how anyone could resist playing around with the distorted reflections it produces. Having seen so many photographs of the thing I first resisted the temptation to shoot it, instead just looking. Then I thought that it might be interesting to photograph the ways that people interact with the sculpture, so I took the camera out and started shooting.
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. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email