Tag Archives: business

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Schnitzel Truck Line

September 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Workers line up at a Manhattan schnitzel truck

I had just stopped nearby to grab a quick coffee and some breakfast, but these downtown workers were apparently already lining up for schnitzel at this mid-morning hour. Food carts and food trucks are ubiquitous in this part of Manhattan, though most are the standard hot dog and pretzel (and more) places. This one offered something a bit different from the usual fare.

The truck itself caught my attention — it isn’t every day that you catch a schnitzel-selling food truck. But there were several other visual elements that seemed interesting to me as well. In a purely visual sense, the complex pattern of the tree shadow on the concrete was striking, almost as if the pattern was part of the sidewalk. (As I shot it I thought about how this “pizza light” might pose similar challenges when photographing in the forest.) The people, obviously, also were intriguing. Except for the second guy in line, who apparently doesn’t want to risk losing his place, each person keeps a rather large distance between himself and the others. The guys at the back of the line busy themselves with their smartphones, and all four of them are visually almost identical, except that one of them is not wearing a pink shirt.

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.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Chinatown Street

August 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A narrow, empty street curves past small shops in New York City’s Chinatown

First off, I’m obviously not a “real” New Yorker — I love the place, but I’m most certainly a visitor and a west coast guy at heart. However, that means that for me many things that might seem familiar and perhaps even ordinary to long time New Yorkers are still special and new. My first visit to New York’s Chinatown area was only a few years ago. We came into the city on Christmas Eve and pretty much the only restaurants open nearby (we were staying on Canal Street) were in Chinatown, so we plunged into the throngs that typically seem to crowd the sidewalks here, eventually wandered down some narrow streets, and arrived at a restaurant where we met up with friends and family members for a wonderful dinner.

This time we got there a bit later during our trip, on an evening when we were all perhaps becoming just a bit travel-tired and when we wanted a dinner that wasn’t quite so expensive as some others we had recently enjoyed. One or both of our sons suggested that we meet up at a place in Chinatown again, and since we arrived a bit early I took advantage of the situation and made a few photographs on this wonderful little street, with its beautiful curve, small shops, and wildly colorful store fronts and signs. Most of the time this street was busy with passing pedestrians, but I waited a bit and managed to make this photograph of the empty street in the evening light. The details of such photographs are often fun and intriguing — the picture on the hair salon sign at the left, the bicycle sitting on its rear wheel at the far right, the colorful flags on one store front, and more.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Downtown Storefronts

December 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of downtown bars and restaurants, Seattle, Washington

This is another Seattle photograph, shot quickly in street style while walking around portions of the city and exploring. It is hard for me to put my finger on precisely what it is that appeals to me about subjects like this, but let me make an attempt. My first impression of such a location, especially in the daytime when everything is more clearly seen and fewer people are around, is that a lot of it is simply run down and even drab – weathered bricks, worn and peeling paint, construction that isn’t quite square. This patina of age and use is itself interesting, and somehow a photograph of it (or the act of making a photograph of it) helps me see it for what it is and for what else I might otherwise not see.

On the large scale, there are patterns that appeal to me – and, yes, patterns are part of my way of seeing. The scene is divided into successively smaller and smaller rectangular shapes for the most part, ranging from the largest one formed by the green facade to the very small ones formed by things like the spaces between the bars of a gate. Superimposed on this are things that don’t fit the geometric grid – the car (which also seems a bit out of context with the old buildings), the roughly triangular shapes of umbrellas, and many other odd little bits and pieces. In fact, if you like this sort of thing, seeing those “bits and pieces” might make the photo become a bit more than what it first seems to be: the figure of a red and white chef statue in the window at far right above some sort of bright green carts, the tree bright blue flower pots and a pink watering can on a ledge, the bright colors near the “Il Chiosco” sign, one door that has been varnished rather than painted the same drab colors as everything else, etc.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Glass Facade

July 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The reflecting glass surfaces of a downtown San Francisco Tower.

This is another photograph exploring the unreal nature of large urban buildings, especially those almost entirely covered in glass. As in a few of the other recent photographs of this subject, I chose to move very close to the base of the building and shoot almost straight up, lining things up so that the upper edge of the building is barely within the boundary of the frame. The building is an otherwise not-all-that-unusual one along lower Market Street in San Francisco. (I’m terrible about identifying the buildings – I really need to start taking some notes or at least photographing addresses!)

There are three things that caught my attention about this building and this composition. First, the glass wall at the right, which is perpendicular to the main facade of the building, produces a reflection that creates a false impression that the building is symmetrical. But what you “see” of the “right side” of the building is actually the left side in reflection – the actual extent of the building to the right cannot be seen from here. Second, reflected light from windows in another building casts patterns of lighter areas on the vertical, fluted columns that extend straight to the top of the building – and this is also reflected in that perpendicular wall on the right. Finally, while the surface of the building is essentially the reflected image of the sky, the differing reflectivity of alternative vertical rows of windows creates a subtle banding in the lightness of the sky reflection.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: business

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

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