Tag Archives: lower

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Tourists, Brooklyn Bridge Park

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Tourists, Brooklyn Bridge Park
Tourists, Brooklyn Bridge Park

Tourists, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Brooklyn, New York. August 8, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tourists walk along the East River shoreline at the Brooklyn Bridge Park as a sailboat passes

I made this photograph in the DUMBO (“Down Under Manhattan Bridge Underpass”) area of Brooklyn’s waterfront, near where both the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges arrive from across the water in Manhattan. After a lot of time spent wandering Manhattan with camera in hand, we decided to take a slightly lower key day and wander Brooklyn instead. We walked here and there, stopping for lunch in a great little sandwich shop, and then wandered some more, traveling through Park Slope until we ended up at the waterfront Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Without any firm plan, but with a general thought of taking a water taxi uptown and into Manhattan, we walked along this park for a while, soon arriving at the water taxi dock. We bought our tickets and then had some time to sit around on this sunny afternoon and wait and watch passers-by. I kept looking a this small are of the promenade where the railing curved back in towards the ferry dock and from which a great panoramic view of Manhattan was available. There was an ebb and flow of other visitors, and among them there were occasionally some interesting juxtapositions of people, clothing, activities, and more. This brief instant, featuring people in various colorful shirts and a passing sailboat (!) seemed like a worthwhile one to capture.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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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DUMBO Afternoon

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DUMBO Afternoon
DUMBO Afternoon

DUMBO Afternoon. Brooklyn, New York. August 8, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People along the waterfront, DUMBO, Brooklyn Bridge Park

I think I was vaguely aware at the time when I made this photograph that I was being affected by a painting that I had seen a few days earlier in Chicago. We traveled from California to New York City by train on this visit, and we stopped for a couple of days in Chicago — since we had to switch trains we figured that this gave us an excuse to visit that city a bit. Among other attractions, the Art Institute of Chicago is there, located in Millennium Park, which was just a short walk from where we were staying. There was a lot to see there, but one of the more famous pieces is Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” so we had to go see it. I was already familiar with other paintings by Seurat and with this one by means of reproductions, but it is a very different experience to see such a thing in person. I have a habit (perhaps annoying to friends and family members!) of taking a lot of time with original work like this — I can never know when or if I’ll see it again, so I spend enough time going over it, somewhat methodically, that I can begin to see features that aren’t visible with a quicker look and I can also fix many elements of the thing in my mind so that I can recall them later.

As we walked along the Brooklyn waterfront a few days later and paused near the river taxi terminal, I began to look at the people who were busy walking, standing, and making photographs of themselves along the water from a sort of personal Seurat perspective. I waited for a group with an interesting set of clothing colors to arrange themselves in an interesting composition and perhaps create a sense that each of them, individually or in groups, might have a story: a woman stands alone, another looks toward other people, a man squats to make a photograph, a couple in purple and orange converse near the fence, two young women are exercising their dogs, a couple at the right (both of whom wear green) look out of the frame.

  • For those who many not know, “DUMBO” is the name of an area in Brooklyn — it is located Directly Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: New York City

Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York City. December 29, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Visitors pass through Gallery 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

It was a cold and rainy day in New York. For the most part we were fairly lucky with the weather when we visited between Christmas and New Years, with mostly fair though cold weather. But we finally encountered a day on which it was not going to be pleasant to travel around a lot on the subway, so we decided to head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apparently about half of the people in New York City had the same idea! Although we arrived reasonably early, there was already a large line of umbrella-carrying folks standing in line, and once inside we found crowds everywhere. We were obviously not the only people to seek shelter in indoor activities. (For the most part the crowds in New York City don’t bother me too much, but on our subway trip back to our hotel after the museum visit I encountered the worst jam-packed subway that I had run into… and realized that this is not a place where I’m ever likely to live. Visit? Yes, and with pleasure!)

We have visited several times before, so we are starting to be familiar with a few sections of this huge museum. We visited a wonderful exhibit of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs (and realized how much of photographic portraiture she already understood more than a century ago) and a small exhibit of photographs from the past 40 years (some of which I liked a lot and some of which leaves me cold). We also wandered a bit, and when we entered this room not far from the main lobby, I spotted a stairway and though that it would be interesting to photograph the room from above. I was intrigued by the lighting, the crowds of people walking in every direction, their shadows, and the large figure of the statue in the center of the room. (As I photographed, using a small mirrorless camera, a guard must have thought that I was shooting video – which is apparently forbidden – and he started yelling at me from the lower level! I finished my shots and moved on.)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Memorial Pool

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Memorial Pool
Memorial Pool

Memorial Pool. New York City. December 26, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Memorial  pool at the National September 11 Memorial, New York City.

It is hard to know precisely what or how to write about this place as it evokes so many responses of all different sorts. On that September day over a decade ago we were on the opposite coast, watching the events unfold as if in a dream. A year and a half earlier we had stood on top of these buildings at night. Since then my oldest son has moved to New York and now works within a very short distance of this place. Our first visit to the site was a few years ago, when almost all original traces of the September 11 events were gone (though if you looked closely you could see chips and cracks in places), and it had become an incredibly busy construction site, with more cranes than I had ever seen in one place and with the new tower climbing skyward. It was hard to connect what we saw on that visit to what had occurred – until we walked around a corner and saw a memorial to firefighters from the closest fire station.

This time we first walked here on Christmas morning. We didn’t pick that day for any particular reason except that we were not far away and it seemed like a place that we wanted to visit. We walked down, looked up at the new tower through trees, and walked back. The next day we wanted to visit the Memorial, so we returned and stood in the lines with thousands of other people in freezing weather as light snow flurries fell. Once there I knew I wanted to photograph, but I didn’t want to intrude on anyone else, so I photographed things more than people in the flat, cloudy light. This photograph includes a bit of one of the pools, where water that has just fallen down the upper walls, leaving ice behind on this cold day, pauses momentarily before continuing its descent into the center void of the memorial.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.