Tag Archives: broken

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Office, Deconstructed

Leave a comment
The Office, Deconstructed
Abandoned and broken chairs abandoned on a Manhattan sidewalk

The Office, Deconstructed. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Abandoned and broken chairs abandoned on a Manhattan sidewalk

I’m no longer quite as surprised as I once was to see what finds its way to the sidewalks, curbs, and gutters in New York City. (I recently arrived at an understanding that people in such places focus more on the quality of their home environments and less on the public environment — beautiful, comfortably designed and equipped homes are found inside buildings that, from a certain perspective, look like dumps from the outside.) If you think about how many people live and work there, it boggles the mind to consider how much stuff flows in and out of the place, including an awful lot of stuff that simply needs to be discarded.

When I walked past this spot, located in an area of very narrow and twisting streets (which should narrow it down for New Yorkers), this particular pile caught my attention. Broken office chairs were piled on the sidewalk, completely blocking it. Nearby were a few other things we might associate with work/office: abandoned coffee cups, an empty cigarette carton. Heck, in a way you might even say there is a “corner” window. Of course, I noted other things, too: the angular and geometric forms of roll-up door, tiled wall, and the strange triangle near the top, plus the soft and blue light in this narrow spot where sun rarely shines, especially in the winter.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Juniper, Sage, and Red Rock

Leave a comment
Juniper, Sage, and Red Rock
A juniper tree stands amidst broken red rock terrain in light reflected from nearby sandstone cliffs

Juniper, Sage, and Red Rock. Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A juniper tree stands amidst broken red rock terrain in light reflected from nearby sandstone cliffs

This photograph includes a number of the characteristic features of this southern Utah Landscape: a solitary juniper tree growing from rocky terrain, sage brush and other brushy plants, the textured red rock, and the intensified color from light bouncing from other red rock cliffs nearby. Here, too, is a bit of rock left from a layer of lighter rock — in this area of Capitol Reef National Park steeply tilted strata place such diverse rocks together in surprising places.

This spot is high on a ridge in a less accessible part of Capitol Reef National Park. This park seems like a bit of an oddity in some ways. If you drive through it probably seems tiny, since the road cuts across it narrow east-west dimension, but the park stretches a good distance north and south. The accessible attractions are very appealing, but most of them lie a short distance from the highway, and to get to the more remote areas of the park you are likely going to have to drive a good distance on some less “civilized” roads and then get out and walk. The area where I made the photograph is such a place. While getting their doesn’t require a major expedition, it is far enough away from the main road that the number of visitors is small and silence and solitude are plentiful.

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: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Broken Glass, Spray-Painted Wall

Leave a comment
Broken Glass, Spray-Painted Wall
A shattered glass window and a spray-painted brick wall

Broken Glass, Spray-Painted Wall. Brooklyn, New York. December 21, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A shattered glass window and a spray-painted brick wall

This is another small and complex street vignette, found on a wall along a street in Brooklyn, New York while walking around making photographs and looking for a place to eat. This section of wall was covered with a lot of street art, layers of contributions from a large group of people over some period of time, no doubt.

There’s not a whole lot for me to write about this one, except that the juxtaposition of broken glass, a single clean vertical line, and the abstract shapes and colors on the right caught my attention. There appears to be some piece of paper behind the fractured glass, and it looks like it may hold some message, but the meaning remains unclear.

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+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

A Story in Red Rock

Leave a comment
A Story in Red Rock
A Story in Red Rock

A Story in Red Rock. Utah. October 23, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Broken rocks spread across a layer of sandstone in evening light

This is another photograph from my first evening on this trip in this particular part of Utah, from a day when I had met up with friends and traveled out to find a campsite where we would stay for the next few days — our base camp for exploring red rock and canyons and for sharing meals and conversation. After setting up camp and settling in, we headed out for our first evening of photography, and would up in a nearby landscape of sculpted sandstone.

We began shooting mostly together, finding and exploring some obvious and quite impressive subjects — each working on his or her own photographs but staying mostly in a group. Eventually we began to split up and wander off to do our own individual exploration. Later in the evening I ended up in an area of massive sandstone benches and ridges and potholes, and as the dusk came on and the light turned red/burgundy I was above a small sandstone canyon descending toward the sagebrush country below. This is a simple scene, but I like to think about a few secrets that it may reveal. It is easy to see such landscapes as being static, but the fact is that they are always changing, though mostly on a time scale that is much longer than that of our lives. But occasionally there are obvious clues, and here the clearest is the scattering of fractured rock that has failed from the seemingly solid face in the upper part of the scene, a hint about how it came to be that the lower flat surface runs into the upper wall.

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

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.