Tag Archives: columns

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Columns, Whitney Museum

February 28, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Columns, Whitney Musuem — Repeating forms of cylindrical columns

Repeating forms of cylindrical columns

I admit it — photographing at the new Whitney Museum in Manhattan almost felt like play. The building is interesting in and off itself, but especially interesting on the high and open outdoor terraces that thrust out from the building toward the city. Although there are no people in this photograph — in fact, I had to take some care to ensure that was the case — the location was also a prime place to photograph people.

These columns occupy a corner, up against a wall, on one of the upper floor outdoor terraces. Their positions allow light to shine on them from multiple directions and on this very cloudy day the light was soft and luminous. Although this is the sort of thing that I might prefer to shoot from the tripod, I was working in street photographer mode and therefore had to shoot handheld, carefully lining up the verticals, trying to obscure a few places where the background shone through between the columns, and then waiting for people to pass by and not be in the shot.

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

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Woman at Crosswalk

December 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A women waits alone at a crosswalk for the light to change, San Francisco.

One thing that might surprise some folks about my street photograph is that I do not think that it is unrelated to my nature and landscape photography. I think that it all connects together as “photography,” whether the subject is a mountain or a building, a bird or a person. I also believe that photographing more than one type of subject — which some might regard as a dilution of vision — actually makes me better at seeing all kinds of subjects as photographs. Shooting street, where things often happen quite quickly and in the midst of a lot of visual stimuli, forces me to be “on” all the time, to see potential subjects quickly, to recognize things that work instinctively, and to look for juxtapositions. And photographing natural landscape subjects informs the way I see the urban landscape.

One obvious potential thread in urban photograph is the juxtaposition of individual figures against a constructed and sometimes massive and impersonal urban landscape. I often look for these “stages” and then watch for people to appear and populate them. This location can actually be a fairly busy street corner, but here I first found the massive stone building, then waited for the scene to clear with the exception of the solitary woman waiting for the light.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Columns and Lichen

November 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Basalt columns and bright yellow lichen, Devils Postpile National Monument

This photograph is probably the result of at least one accident. We had gone to the Eastern Sierra for a few days to photograph fall color, arriving late in the evening, tired and ready to sleep. We discussed how early we would get up the next morning, but I managed to remain vague about my plans, secretly hoping that I might not wake up on “photographer time,” but perhaps actually sleep in a bit! In fact, that is what happened — and it was probably a good thing since I was tired after three busy weeks including several previous trips over the crest to photograph on the east side of the range.

Of course, once we got up late we still had to figure out what we would photograph. Obviously dawn light was out of the question, and it seemed like we might not get out until the best early and soft light for aspen color had passed. We hatched a very general plan to head over to Devils Postpile National Monument, though I didn’t have real high hopes for it. However, once we arrived we realized that we had actually come at just the right time. This feature, at this time of year, doesn’t get sunlight very early. When we arrived the face was still in beautiful, soft, shaded light but the surroundings were reflecting some light onto the columns. That’s what I call a “happy accident!”

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Basalt Columns, Lichen, Autumn Plants

October 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn plants and lichen lend color to basalt columns, Devils Postpile National Monument

Quite honestly, this photograph was at least partially the product of laziness! We were recently in the eastern Sierra Nevada for a few (more) days of autumn color photography. We had driven up late the previous day, and by the time we got settled in to our lodgings the idea of getting up again at “oh-dark-thirty” to head out and make dawn photographs was not appealing. Rather than overtly cop out, we sort of agreed to maybe not set alarms and instead just sort of see when we might wake up. Needless to say, on the morning after a very long drive that ended late at night… we did not get up at the crack of dawn! In fact, we wandered out for breakfast at perhaps 7:30 or so, and only then returned to our room to get ready for photography.

With no prior planning at all, we made a more or less spontaneous decision to visit Devils Postpile National Monument, which was convenient to our lodgings at Mammoth Lakes. I’ve been in that area many times, but always in conjunction with backpacking trips, and most of those simply headed out from Agnew Meadow. We finally got down there in the middle of the morning. It turns out that this is actually a very good time to photograph this geological structure, as the sun is behind it, producing beautiful soft shaded light on the details of the basalt columns. To make a series of photographs from which this image comes, I used a very long lens, which allowed me to isolate and compose photographs out of small areas of the much larger wall of basalt columns. (Update — December 2015: Patty Emerson Mitchell reminds me that I almost left my camera in the car on this morning, claiming that I was really just there to let her see this location!)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: columns

Columns, Whitney Museum

Woman at Crosswalk

Columns and Lichen

Basalt Columns, Lichen, Autumn Plants

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