Sunset light illuminates tall columns of the Standard Hotel along the High Line Elevated Park in Chelsea, New York City.
This is another photograph from our Friday evening walk along the High Line Elevated Park in Chelsea. We walked under the Standard Hotel, which straddles the park at this point, just as the warm and saturated pre-sunset light was peaking. Given the quality of the light and the beautiful evening, I was surprised that there were no people on the other side of the plexiglas wall – there were certainly plenty of us enjoying the evening along the walkway of the park.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
An airplane crosses a cloud-filled New York City sky above the Standard Hotel at the High Line Park in Chelsea.
This hotel straddling the High Line Elevated Park in New York City presents a striking appearance, especially when the right clouds are reflected in its glass-window surface. We were in the area on a summer evening when the sky was filled with interesting clouds, and by the time we finished walking to and then along the elevated path of the High Line park we had seen it from quite a few angles.
This was my first visit to New York City in a decade, and I have to say that coming to terms with it as a photographic subject is a tall task for someone trying to take in the whole thing for (not quite) the first time. I do a lot of street and urban photography, but usually in places with which I’m familiar – San Francisco is a short train ride from where I live, so I photograph there a lot. For me, it takes some time to get beyond the overwhelming first impressions and settle down and achieve a level of comfort with the place. There were days in New York when, despite being in the midst of tremendous numbers of photographic opportunities, I found it almost impossible to figure out what to shoot. And there were also certain times when “the light came on” and I made a lot of photographs, including this evening.
The windows of the Standard Hotel reflect clouds and sky above the High Line Park.
We spent a week in New York City in mid-August – our first visit in a decade. I had forgotten a lot about the character of this city, but it all started coming back to me as we drove into Manhattan on a Friday evening and encountered people everywhere, out and about and doing all of the things that one does here. I have many images in my mind from the visit, but one is a sort of combination of massive, tall, and static structures surrounded by the constant motion of vehicles and people.
The next evening we made our way – with the help of our oldest son, who now lives there – down to the High Line Park area, arriving at the beginning of the “golden hour” light on an evening featuring wonderfully textured clouds. The Standard Hotel straddles the High Line – which, for those who may not know, is a narrow elevated park built on the structure of an old elevated railway. Here the cloud-filled sky is reflected in the windows of the hotel.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Evening sky over the Great Western Divide reflected in an unnamed alpine lake, Sequoia National Park, California.
I don’t know quite what to say about this area of the Sierra located just east of the Great Western Divide in the upper reaches of the Kern River drainage – I’ve been very close to here on many previous trips, but I never quite managed to hop the intervening ridge even though I’ve thought vaguely about visiting this area for decades and I once passed through the lower reaches of it, more or less by accident and completely unaware of what was just upstream.
A group of us traveled over Kearsarge Pass (11,700’+) and Forrester Pass (13, 200′) to arrive in the upper Kern at Tyndall Creek along the JMT. (I think the general area is also known as the “bighorn plateau.”) I’ve been here on several previous occasions while heading to or circumnavigating Mt. Whitney. While I’ve gone east (to exit over the very rough Shepherd Pass at 12,000′) I’ve not really explored west and north of this area. Our general plan on this trip was to rectify that, specifically by visiting remote and very high Lake South America. After wandering up a mosquito-infested valley, climbing its headwall, and then dropping to a lake just below the saddle we made it to Lake South America. We had originally planned to stay here overnight, but the very barren and rocky surroundings didn’t attract us in the end, so we decided to head on to the west and south.
After a bit of a walk on a somewhat rough trail (which got much rougher later on) we arrived at a series of timberline lakes overlooking the Great Western Divide, which towered above us to the west. There is much I could say about this area, but I’ll limit myself to a few comments… and not name the specific location we visited. We finally found a sandy camping spot between a few lakes and tarns – it was surrounded by stunning alpine views ranging from the lakes themselves and the surrounding rocky meadows and clumps of trees to the jagged and high peaks to our west. The next morning we followed a very faint trail down the canyon, passing almost continuously through astonishing scenery featuring intimate, granite-surrounded meadows and small lakes.
I must go back. It won’t be easy. I’ll want to carry a bit more photography gear than I carried on this trip, and I’ll want to stay a day or two longer. And the location is two to three days from the nearest trailheads, all of which take you over some very high passes.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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