Tag Archives: city

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Green and Blue Wall

January 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Graffiti and poster remnants on a green and blue Brooklyn brick wall.

We arrived in New York late the day before, in time to check in to lodgings and meet our “kids” (two sons and their fiances) for dinner, but there wasn’t a lot of time to get around and see and photograph. The next morning we met up with our youngest son in the more or less the Williamsburg area, and we wandered about, hitting the waterfront of the East River and then finding lunch.

During any bit of urban wandering I’m almost always on the lookout for photographs. Photographing on the street is an exercise in working quickly and being versatile. In most cases I don’t have a specific subject in mind — the closest to that may be a general idea of looking a buildings or people or water or interiors or… In this case I was in an area with a lot of older construction, and we passed through a few spots that were obviously the hope to lots of posters and graffiti. Oddly, since people are sometimes trying to paint out the tagging, there can be many layers of often new paint, posters in various states of decay, and odds and ends of painted words and images. Here the remnants of a poster partially obscured a hand drawn heart on a wall that appeared to have been painted in two not quite identical shades of blue-green.

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

Photographs: New York City

Two Bridges, East River

December 31, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The East River and Manhattan Bridge, photographed from the Brooklyn Bridge, winter.

During our recent December 2015 week-plus in New York City we stayed only a five or ten minute walk from the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Primarily that put us in a great area for food and other things and very close to a bunch of subway stations, but it also meant that a walk on the bridge was almost inevitable. On this day we had a date at the Metropolitan Opera in the evening, but we found ourselves with just enough time to wander onto the bridge before we had to go to Manhattan.

This bridge is, of course, a tremendously popular place these days. Even on a cold day after Christmas there were hordes of people walking across. I think I’ve made the classic photograph of the bridge towers and cables before, so I was looking for something that wasn’t that. As I walked along I noticed how the Manhattan Bridge towers (and other urban landscape elements in other photographs not shown here) lined up between the cables, and I soon found this spot that placed parts of the bridge structure in the foreground.

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

11th Avenue

December 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking down 11th Avenue from the High Line Park

Expect a wide-ranging mix of photographic subjects over the next few weeks. There will certainly be more from the San Joaquin Valley, both landscapes and wildlife. I still have some older photographs from the Sierra and other locations in the queue. This photograph is part of an inevitable series of “urban landscapes” and urban/street photography from our recent visit to New York City. The latter is a favorite subject of mine. As a west-coaster, I only get to photographer there perhaps once per year, but when I do I like to take full advantage of the opportunity.

This photograph feels like an urban landscape to me. On the final day of our trip we found time to revisit the High Line Park, a place that has a different feeling at each time of year. The park, for those who may not already know, runs along the path of an old elevated railroad bed on the west side of Manhattan. It has become an incredibly popular place, but with good reason, as it winds through all sorts of interesting urban terrain a few stories above street level. A new section has opened since our last visit, and it extends the path northward to and past the Hudson Yards area. This photograph was made along the new section where it crosses 11th Avenue, and where I saw the same beautiful light that might stop me in my tracks anywhere.

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Alleyway Ladder

June 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A wooden later climbs a concrete wall in a San Francisco alley

This is a photograph from one of my early morning forays into downtown San Francisco, trips that tend to become a bit more common this time of year. The first of “the season” was near the end of May. I started at the Caltrain Station, worked my way mostly along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building area, and then took a winding route off into the City.

I tend to walk slowly while working on these projects — stopping to look, to wait, and to poke my camera into odd little corners. Here I found the gate to a small alley open, and after watching a couple of people walk through on their way to a business in the back I followed. Just inside the gate was an old textured concrete wall with this wooden ladder leading up along its face, and the combination of the textured concrete, the form of the ladder, and the perspective convergence created an interesting abstraction.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: city

Green and Blue Wall

Two Bridges, East River

11th Avenue

Alleyway Ladder

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