A group of people sit on a concrete bench as a red bus stops behind them.
I think there might be a bit more to this photograph than meets the eye — at least I like to think so. The scene is a concrete bench along the edge of Trafalgar Square late in the day, as the low angle sun hits the bench and its occupants straight on. I’ll leave it at that…
Two pedestrians in blue shirts walk past architecture emphasizing vertical and horizontal lines
A photograph like this is a bit hard to explain, but I’ll try. At least a little bit. As is often the case, for some reason this structure – a parking lot – caught my attention. I like the texture of concrete when doing city photography, and this landscape of lines seemed a bit striking, and in fact it got me thinking again about the very linear nature of much of the urban environment. Aside from a few things – the green tree, the red card, and the people – essentially everything in this scene can be regarded as being a sum of horizontals and verticals, from the obvious vertical covering of the garage to the wires, to the street lanes and lane lines, to the sidewalk, and the rows of squares on the background building.
It occurs to me from time to time that there is something very unnatural about this, and it might even be a cause of the disconnect from the environment that can occur in such places. But as (pretty much) always, the constructed world is not perfectly linear. But still, to me, the two people walking along the sidewalk, whose blue attire also caught my attention, look very small and very passive relative to the constructed world they inhabit.
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
Shiny blue and black paint on a wall and a handrail on the Tower Bridge, London
I made this photograph in quite the jet-lagged state – though I had recovered a bit from my initial bout that left me unable to do anything but sleep for an hour or two right after we arrived at our hotel in Kensington. I had a laugh-worthy plan to minimize jet lag – and like most such plans it failed miserably. I figured I would just move my wake up time an hour earlier every day as the trip to approached, and I was actually getting up very early in the morning right before we left. (I can report that it is very quiet and peaceful at 2:00 a.m… ;-) What I failed to consider was that I was also reducing the length of every day by one full hour for the better part of a week before travel… and almost entirely by losing sleep. Obviously, I had a big sleep deficit going by the time we left. On top of that, I was basically completely unable to sleep on the flight over – which is odd, since I can usually sleep on planes.
We arrived in London, took the underground to Kensington, got a bit lost, finally found our hotel, checked in… and I was so jet-lagged that I was incapable of doing anything at all useful. I slept for an hour or two and managed to achieve a state of modest consciousness. If nothing else, I was so tired at this point that I had little problem sleeping that night. So we got on the underground and took the train to the station by the Tower Bridge and walked across it. I was so out of it that I didn’t realize until a few days later than I had completely switched north and south directions! Somewhere I probably have some photographs of the whole bridge, but being the sort of photographer I am, I spent a bit of my time pointing that camera at odd things like this pattern of shiny blue paint, stone, and a black railing.
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
A downtown San Diego building with windows and green walls
Right around April Fools Day we spent several days in San Diego. Oddly for a long-time Californian and a person who has visited that city before, I really don’t know San Diego that well. (Past visits have mostly been for various conferences and meetings, and I’ve tended to fly in, head straight to a hotel, do my business, head back to the airport, and leave.) On this visit – yes, for the first time – I spent some time photographing at Balboa Park, where there are a number of interesting subjects ranging from architecture to people. Lot’s of people!
We also walked around the downtown area of San Diego quite a bit, as that is where we stayed. Downtown San Diego has a character, as most cities do, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Architecturally, much of the area near where we were seems to be that type that is alternately attractive on account of its wide streets and very modern buildings but also a bit sterile for much the same reason. The overall place, not surprisingly, seems to mix up some of the Mexican influence, a wannabe tropical quality that occasionally reminds me just a tiny bit of Miami, and a somewhat toned-down version of the over-the-top LA Basin atmosphere. We were out walking in the morning on a weekday when I looked up as we passed the back of this building, with its interesting color combination and various window patterns.
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
