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…
Walking up Market Street in San Francisco I was watching out for anything that could be photographically interesting — architecture, people, vehicles, light — when I looked down and saw this little vignette of… not much at all really. Perhaps someone had been cleaning the street earlier, and now a puddle of water covered some sidewalk bricks and flowed over the gaps between others.
I stopped, more or less in the middle of the sidewalk, likely forcing a few people to take a path around me or perhaps just wonder what I was photographing with my camera pointed straight down. What I saw was, first, the water itself. Then I saw the narrow vertical band of lighter tones, where there was a break between reflected buildings. I only paused for a moment to make a couple of exposures, and then I continued on.
Brick buildings along narrow streets, Bear Gardens, Southwark, London
Yes, another London photograph. We had a bit of time between appointments and we ended up wandering around this area for a while in the evening. Here there are very old brick buildings along narrow streets that twist this way and that. This wall lined up almost perfectly with the setting sun, which glanced across its surface, highlighting the texture and catching an edge of the bricks straight on.
I didn’t share this photograph for a long time. I continued to go back and forth between a black and white rendition — which may allow the forms to seem a bit more abstract — and this version with its warmer colors and more subtle gradations of tones. (On an unrelated topic, why do I keep wanting to write “beer gardens” rather than “bear gardens?” ;-)
A woman carrying a cup walks past the front of a red and white brick building
I think I made this photograph west of Central Park, but no guarantees. (I could probably figure it out by reviewing the photographs before and after this one, but it doesn’t seem too important. Let me know if you disagree!)
This is representative of one way I shoot urban subjects. I’m pretty certain that what happened here first was that I saw the interesting colors and forms of the tall building, with its red bricks and pure white trim, steps, and neat black fence. I also saw the juxtaposition of the irregular and natural forms of the two trees (and a few other bits of greenery) with the rigid and angular forms of brick and trim. No doubt, at about that point I saw the woman walking up the street — so I framed the photograph and waited for her to enter the frame, timing a quick series of three shots as she passed in front of the building carrying her cup of coffee, an iconic signifier of the new urban resident.
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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
