Tag Archives: man

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Barbershop, Manhattan

January 27, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Barbershop storefront in the Chinatown section of Manhattan

As I continue my somewhat binary posting pattern — street and urban photography one day, with nature, wildlife, and landscape the next — today I’m back in New York City, during out end-of-year December 2017 week spent there, visiting family, eating, walking, and doing photography. Oh, and freezing. We managed to arrive just before a bout of exceptionally cold weather — at least for these Californians — during which daytime temperatures didn’t always make it into the twenties. It didn’t snow until the final day, but it surely was cold enough.

The cold didn’t keep us indoors, though. We were out every day, walking through as much of Manhattan as we could. A typically walk started near our hotel at the end of Lower Manhattan and (if we didn’t get a head start on the subway) worked its way north along any of several paths. Eventually the cold and wind would become too much, and we would stop for coffee or food, then head back out. On one morning our uptown-bound route took us into the narrow streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, a place I always like to see. (On our previous visit we stayed for a week on essentially the boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy.) Things here are often a bit ragged around the edges and it can be crowded, but there is plenty to see. The dense patterns of people walking the streets, the interiors of shops, the scenes on the sidewalks are all interesting.

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

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Path Above San Francisco

December 29, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A person walks on a path through a grove above the night lights of San Francisco

This is another of my handheld night photographs, something I’ve been experimenting with for a couple of years now. Newer high ISO small handheld cameras make it possible to work without a tripod in the urban landscape, essentially doing street photography in the (near) darkness. While there are some compromises in pure image quality — more noise to deal with in post, and greater potential for motion blur, working this way makes in possible to photograph in ways that just aren’t possible with a tripod. I can move quickly and respond to changing subjects more readily, and I’m less of an obvious intrusion on the scene.

This photograph might seem like one for which a tripod would be appropriate. I can’t argue with that on a technical basis. But I point out that between the time I saw this person walking along the path and the time I made three quick exposures was measured in seconds. With a tripod-mounted camera I simply would not have been able to make the photograph.

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

Preparing to Open

December 18, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning on a San Francisco street, as a man prepares a store for opening

This is another in my small series of photographs made on a recent two-day visit to San Francisco. Since we were there primarily to attend a couple of event musical performances, we had time during the day to combine general laziness with street photography and walks in the area. We weren’t up exactly at the crack of dawn — and then there was breakfast — but we were up and out on the street before things became very crowded.

From where we stayed, the walk down toward the Hayes Valley area near the opera house and symphony hall gradually evolved from a mostly urban residential to a mostly commercial area of shops and restaurants. This market was roughly at the midway point, where there were still residences (of the old style rather than newer condos) but there were also a few businesses, including this corner market, outside of which an employee was doing a quick clean up before, I presume, opening up for the day.

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Hair, Bus, Sun

December 13, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A street vignette in San Francisco

The camera is tilted. The guy is hanging off the edge of the frame. The sun is blown out in the center of the sky. It was underexposed. Darned bus appeared in the frame. That’s street photography, and I like it. There isn’t a whole lot to say about the photograph itself — or perhaps there is more to say that will fit into two paragraphs. The fellow caught my attention as we were walking along. As he passed, with the sun backlighting his wild hair, I had just enough time to squeeze off a shot without even raising the camera to my eyes.

Doing street photography reminds me of an important thing, namely the crucial role that several things play in photography, things that don’t often get quite enough attention among some photographers, especially those who tend to gravitate to landscape photography and who (with good reasons!) like to attend to the careful calculation of many aspects of picture-making. (Don’t worry, I like to take those things into consideration, too.) The things too often left unsaid have to do with the role of luck and with the importance of being able to respond very quickly, even intuitively, at times. We simply cannot control all aspects of a photograph. In a few situations — perhaps working in the studio with inanimate objects — we can come rather close, but in almost all other sorts of photography it is as much about finding a thing and then recording it in the best way possible during the time we have to work with it. Clearly, this photograph is highly reliant on things I could not control. But, honestly, the same could be said about wildlife photography, and even about many landscape photographs.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: man

Barbershop, Manhattan

Path Above San Francisco

Preparing to Open

Hair, Bus, Sun

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