Tag Archives: black and white

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Sunday Morning, Washington Square

July 21, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People sitting on a bench and reading on Sunday morning, Washington Square

On Sunday morning we walked uptown from our hotel, heading for a rendezvous with others. We could have taken a subway, but instead we decided to walk. Eventually we passed through part of the NYU campus and out into Washington Square. While it was morning, it was no longer particularly early by the time we got there, and park life was in full swing. There were many people everywhere, someone had a grand piano set up in a walkway for an outdoor recital, and several jazz groups were playing elsewhere in the park.

Around the edges, particularly near the northeast corner, things seemed a bit quieter, though there were still plenty of people. Here many of them were sitting quietly on benches, alone or in small groups. As we headed toward the park exit near this corner I passed this group of people quietly reading on one of the benches.

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

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

Gelato and Cannoli Cart, Night

July 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Passers-by stop at a gelato and cannoli cart on a Manhattan evening

By chance, on our recent trip to New York City we ended up in a Manhattan hotel more or less on the boundary between the Chinatown and Little Italy districts. Little Italy these days seems to be more of a tourist proposition than a real Italian neighborhood, though I wouldn’t say the same about Chinatown. In any case, we were obviously in an area with a lot of people and quite a few potential photographic subjects. (While we stayed in this area, we spent the majority of our time in the city elsewhere.)

Some of the tourist-oriented areas actually have advantages for night street photography, with the main plus being that there is often a lot of commercial lighting to make the scenes and people more visible. This little stand (or pair of stands?) selling gelato and the ubiquitous Little Italy cannoli is a prime example. The bright lights inside the cart spill out onto the passers-by and the sidewalk, and there is enough additional ambient light to allow me to work without flash. And, in case you were wondering, I resisted the lure of the deserts on this evening – though we eventually gave in the night before we left New York. (I might have had a few desserts elsewhere though. Might. Maybe. I’m not saying for sure…)

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

Morning Light, Domes, Lake

June 13, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on Tenaya Lake, granite domes, and Mount Conness

I have been in a bit of a black and white mood recently. Although most of my photographs today are color photographs, my roots are in black and white. Many years ago that is what I learned to develop and print, all the way back to when my father took me into his home darkroom when I was a very young kid. Until I began to use slide film, virtually everything I shot was in black and white, and so many of my early photographic heroes also worked almost exclusively in monochrome.

I order to render the conjunction of shapes and masses, curves and textures in this complex scene of the Sierra Nevada landscape rising from Tenaya Lake, it seemed to me that black and white was the right choice. I made the photograph in the morning — not “crack of dawn” early, but a bit later, when the sun’s rays were clearing the higher ridge to the right and illuminating elements of the scene right down to the lake itself. The distant mass of Mount Conness is slightly obscured by haze, and a thin layer of bright clouds pass overhead.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: France, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Eiffel Tower, Clouds

June 12, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thin clouds in bright summer sky above the Eiffel Tower

It was Paris, so I had to photograph the Eiffel Tower. It is expected of me. It is an iconic site and it is impressive in person. But I found it to be a difficult photographic subject. It is easy to photograph it, but I found it tricky to find a way to not just make a picture of the Eiffel Tower. (On the other hand, I did almost exactly that on one evening late in our visit when we had a view from an upper story towards to tower as it got dark and the lights on the tower were illuminated.)

In any case, I decided to try some relatively tightly cropped photographs of the structure, some of which were much tighter than this one. But I got lucky, and some thin, fluffy clouds floated over in the midday light, producing a soft and glowing quality in the sky, and this seemed to contrast nicely with the start, strong, and dark form of the tower.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: black and white

Sunday Morning, Washington Square

Gelato and Cannoli Cart, Night

Morning Light, Domes, Lake

Eiffel Tower, Clouds

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