Sometimes there really isn’t a lot to write about a photograph.
This is one of those times.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
A women on a bicycle stops to check her phone as a street musician pauses against a brick wall, Florence, Italy.
Yes, I seem to be in a retro frame of mind recently, what with a significant number of black and white images plus a thread of street photography. Every so often, I think, my roots in black and white photography seem to come back to the foreground. I began photography decades ago (how many decades I won’t say…) when my father took me — and my siblings — under his photographic wing. He started us with very basic cameras, and eventually we graduated to helping him in his home darkroom. Obviously, in those days, virtually everyone was workmen in black and white, so that’s were I started. My photography and that of the folks who caught my attention was entirely black and white. Eventually I moved to slide film, but that initial exposure to black and white stuck.
This is another of the photographs I made in Florence, Italy back in the summer of 2016. As often happens, I move on from a collection of photographs as other subjects catch my attention — so it is almost always profitable for me to return to the “abandoned” files later on, where I almost always discover images that I like. While Florence in the summer can be a very busy place, crowded with hordes of tourists, if you poke around in the right places at the right times you can find quieter scenes. And if you like soft, shaded light, you can often find that in abundance here, too.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
An empty, curving street at night, Florence, Italy
Three years ago we visited Florence, Italy near the end of more than a month of European travel. We were in Italy for almost the last two weeks of our trip, with most of the time spent with extended family in the hills of the Chianti region. From there we went to Florence for a few days of sightseeing, eating, museum visiting, and photography before we caught our flight back home.
In the summer, central Florence is a pretty busy place, filled with tourists during most of the daytime hours. I like photographing people, but it can be overwhelming. However, there were two times of the day when I could walk and photograph in relatively crowd-free conditions: early in the morning and late enough in the evening that the crowds had thinned. By the time I walked past this street, in a place where there would have been a good number of people earlier in the day, it was essentially deserted.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Two figures in midday along a street in Le Marais, Paris.
Le Marais, in Paris, if full of visual delights. This area was “left behind” when much of central Paris was modernized, so you won’t find the wide boulevards and open views. Instead there are very narrow streets — often barely wide enough for a single vehicle, and that only because sidewalks are barely a foot or two wide. The buildings are old, often leaning at odd and interesting angles.
This photograph is a bit unusual in that I made it in full midday sun. I would most often not do a lot of photography at such a time of day, but I liked the stark quality of this light, and I thought that it could work as a black and white image.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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