Tag Archives: line

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line

October 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Remnants of the old right-of-way of the High Line Railway run in front of and old and run-down brick building, New York City.

There is, no doubt, a lot of history in this scene that I’m unaware of – but the visual elements mostly caught my attention as we walked past this spot. On the final morning of our August 2011 visit to New York, we were walking from West Village to Chelsea when we passed this area. My son, who lives in Brooklyn and is obsessed (in the good way!) with walking around lots of areas of New York City and making photographs and noting what he sees, first pointed out the terrace in the lower part of the scene (bounded by the railing) and the steel structure at the lower left. He told me that this was part of the High Line Railroad that used to run through this part of Manhattan. A more famous section of the High Line has become a very popular “elevated park” in Chelsea, but in this area it is pretty much just abandoned and, in places, gone.

I don’t know what the tall and worn-looking brick building is, but I’d sure like to know. My hunch, given the appearance of a former white paint job and the proximity to the railroad tracks, is that it must have been some sort of industrial building at some point.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building

October 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A double-reflection of late light from an adjacent building appears in the upper story of this window-covered industrial building near the High Line Park in New York City.

This is another of my photographs from New York City’s High Line Park, made during my late August visit to the city earlier this year. For those who may not know, the High Line is a relatively new (and still under construction) urban park in Chelsea that is “elevated,” being built on the bed of the old elevated railway that passed through here. The park is tremendously popular, especially on summer evenings.

Aside from being a pleasant place to walk, the High Line affords some interesting views that are usually not quite this accessible. There are not to many places where you can walk through a busy urban environment such as Manhattan for a mile or so, out in the open, a couple of stories above street level, with largely unobstructed views of subjects near and far, and above and below. Here the park passes between some taller buildings that are closely spaced, creating an interesting lighting situation. (Oddly, it is a kind of lighting that I often look for when shooting landscape or nature subjects.) The sun is behind the building in the photograph, so the building is largely lit by light from the open sky plus light reflected from the building behind my camera position. You can see that other building in the windows here, the upper floors in direct sun light and the lower in shadow.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sunset, Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon

October 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon storm clouds clear from the sunset sky above Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon, Yosemite National Park.

With this photograph I get to tell another of the “serendipitous photograph” stories that seem to keep coming up in my work. In this case, we had been camped near the lake in the lower area of the photograph for several days, getting to know the place and having time to carefully photograph various areas nearby. On a previous evening we had climbed to a second lake a few hundred feet higher than the “main” lake, from which one of our group decided to traverse a nearby slope. He ended up at another alpine lake that looked interesting, and the next morning others went with him to visit it. I didn’t, because I had some other things that I wanted to photograph in morning light and because I had a hunch that the light might turn out to be more interesting in the evening, mainly because the area of the lake was open to the west and, therefore, the evening light.

So in the evening, after our typical very early dinner, I departed on a walk to the upper lake that my friends had visited that morning, wandering around “our” lake and through the surrounding forest to pick up a rocky ramp that ascended toward the lake. However, I apparently missed a turn somewhere. I finished the main part of the climb and apparently should have turned left immediately – but I continued on straight ahead and soon found myself in a little meadowy area with a rather steep bunch of rocks between me and my goal. I finally found a circuitous route up a series of ramps, but now it was getting too close to sunset and my turn-around time, so I had to retrace my steps without getting to the lake.

I returned to the small meadow and made a few photographs there, then headed back toward the route by which I had ascended. Despite not making the lake, one of my main goals had been to get up high to photograph the surrounding terrain at sunset, especially since earlier in the day large thunderclouds had been building to the east and creating the possibility of some very special evening light. As I descended the upper part of the “ramp,” the pre-sunset colors started to light up and I quickly found a spot with a good vantage point to view this in several directions. Among the last photographs I made as the light started to fade was the series including this image. (It is actually a composite of two exposures – one for the very bright and saturated clouds and another for the darker shadows down near that lake.) Beyond the lake is the left end of rocky Shepherds Crest and even further in the distance is Virginia Canyon and then the Sierra crest.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Reflections, Trees and Rocks, Morning Light

October 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on shoreline trees and rocks at a back-country sub-alpine lake, Yosemite National Park.

I had the chance to shoot around this lake on three successive mornings. The first morning was, to some extent, more about wandering around and getting the feel of the place – though I did make photographs, too. But on the second and third mornings I had figured out what and when I wanted to photograph and I was able to more or less get right to work. Up before dawn, I walked to the far shore before the sun rose, where there was still frost on the shoreline meadows and I could shoot in the soft, early light. Soon, as the sun rose above the ridge to our east, the sun light began to make its way down to the lake, first hitting the tops of trees along the west shore, then lighting the shoreline itself, and eventually moving up the lake and lighting up trees, water, rocky islands, shoreline boulders, and the forest.

In situations like this there are several specific things that I look for and like to shoot. I love to photograph the backlit trees, pointing my camera almost directly toward the sun. The trees light up and their colors intensify. I also watch for forested slopes that climb to the east, like the one on the far side of the lake in this photograph. As the sun rises higher, the slanting beams of light begin to pick off the tops of the forest trees, and can still leave a darker background for those other backlit trees. Of course, such shooting does present a few challenges. Obviously, shooting straight into the light creates some serious flare issues, and I improvise all sorts of interesting ways to shield the lens from direct light: my hat, hands and arms held in the air, you name it. When shooting over the water it can be even trickier since you have “two suns” producing flare – the real sun in the sky, and the very intense reflected sun coming up from the water. Bugs can also be a problem! Just like the trees, shoreline mosquitos and flies also pick up that wonderful backlight… and when they are thick enough they can create little blurry stripes all over the frame. (This leads to loads of oh-so-fun work with the clone tool in post!)

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