Tag Archives: little italy

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

Ristorante Luna

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Ristorante Luna
A sidewalk tableau in front of Ristorante Luna, Little Italy

Ristorante Luna. New York City. July 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A sidewalk tableau in front of Ristorante Luna, Little Italy

This is another photograph from one of my night walks in the area around Little Italy in Manhattan last July during a weeklong visit to the city. It is a touristy area, but that does mean that there is a great variety of people around and that there is plenty of ambient light spilling onto sidewalks and even into the street at night — all of which is good news for night street photography.

Photographs like this one are not unrelated to my landscape photography. In fact, they often begin as urban landscapes. I find a location that interested me — it could be a storefront, a restaurant, a street vendor, a bit of architecture, or a place with interesting light — and then I wait for people to assemble themselves inside this landscape in ways that seem interesting. This is a matter of patience, luck, and perhaps interactions between people passing through the space. Eventually a tableau with a certain kind of balance may emerge, and you might be able to imagine stories about the people and their interactions.

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.
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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Gelato Stand, Evening

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Gelato Stand, Evening
People stop at a Little Italy gelato stand on a summer evening, Manhattan

Gelato Stand, Evening. New York City. July 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People stop at a Little Italy gelato stand on a summer evening, Manhattan

Near the end of the year it is my custom to start going back to my raw file archives from the previous year, looking for photographs that I might have overlooked initially. Sometimes I missed them because I was working on other things that caught my attention at the time. In other cases there were simply a lot of photographs, and I moved on to other work before finishing with an earlier set of photographs. I’m starting that project now, so you are likely to see some older work mixed in with more recent photographs over the next few weeks.

We spent a week in New York City in July. (Yes, I know that smart people don’t go to New York during the hot and humid summer months. But I do. Draw your own conclusions… ;-) This time we stayed in the general area of Little Italy. That area is a bit of a tourist place, but it is also an interesting place to wander at night. There are lots of light, lots of shops, and lots of people out and about. On this evening I headed out from the hotel just after dark and did a quick loop through the neighborhood with my camera. Here a group of people lines up at a small gelato stand, while someone shops next door and nearby people sit on benches along the sidewalk.

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

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

Gelato King

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Gelato King
Late-night passers-by at the Gelato King stand, corner of Mulberry and Grand, NYC

Gelato King. New York City. July 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late-night passers-by at the Gelato King stand, corner of Mulberry and Grand, NYC

Another gelato stand! It seems that this is becoming a theme here. Of course, given that we were staying in a hotel located essentially on the border between Manhattan’s Chinatown and Little Italy districts, these kinds of places were everywhere: Italian deli on the corner, Italian pastry across the street, gelato and cannoli never more than a few footsteps away. (The fact that we were staying in this particular area was more a function of a good price on a hotel than of a desire to be in the middle to the tourist attractions of Little Italy.)

This photograph, if nothing else, illustrates a few things that I look for when photographing urban areas at night, at least when working with subjects like this one. It has a central focus point, and one that seems to provide most of the interesting light in the scene — namely the little gelato stand, with its light (and that of the cannoli stand just around the corner) spilling out onto the sidewalk and providing much of the illumination in the scene. (Additional ambient illumination from other businesses provides a bit of light on the figures.) I made a series of photographs here in rapid succession as people walked through the scene. In some there is no one but the fellow in the stand, in others a group is queued up to buy gelato. In this one the people are almost uniformly spread across the scene, with various orientations to the central light. On both sides women in lighter colors walk toward it; red and yellow tones show up in the attire of several of the subjects.

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

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

Gelato and Cannoli Cart, Night

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Gelato and Cannoli Cart, Night
Passers-by stop at a gelato and cannoli cart on a Manhattan evening

Gelato and Cannoli Cart, Night. New York City. July 3, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Passers-by stop at a gelato and cannoli cart on a Manhattan evening

By chance, on our recent trip to New York City we ended up in a Manhattan hotel more or less on the boundary between the Chinatown and Little Italy districts. Little Italy these days seems to be more of a tourist proposition than a real Italian neighborhood, though I wouldn’t say the same about Chinatown. In any case, we were obviously in an area with a lot of people and quite a few potential photographic subjects. (While we stayed in this area, we spent the majority of our time in the city elsewhere.)

Some of the tourist-oriented areas actually have advantages for night street photography, with the main plus being that there is often a lot of commercial lighting to make the scenes and people more visible. This little stand (or pair of stands?) selling gelato and the ubiquitous Little Italy cannoli is a prime example. The bright lights inside the cart spill out onto the passers-by and the sidewalk, and there is enough additional ambient light to allow me to work without flash. And, in case you were wondering, I resisted the lure of the deserts on this evening – though we eventually gave in the night before we left New York. (I might have had a few desserts elsewhere though. Might. Maybe. I’m not saying for sure…)

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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