Tag Archives: manhattan

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Chinatown Street

August 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A narrow, empty street curves past small shops in New York City’s Chinatown

First off, I’m obviously not a “real” New Yorker — I love the place, but I’m most certainly a visitor and a west coast guy at heart. However, that means that for me many things that might seem familiar and perhaps even ordinary to long time New Yorkers are still special and new. My first visit to New York’s Chinatown area was only a few years ago. We came into the city on Christmas Eve and pretty much the only restaurants open nearby (we were staying on Canal Street) were in Chinatown, so we plunged into the throngs that typically seem to crowd the sidewalks here, eventually wandered down some narrow streets, and arrived at a restaurant where we met up with friends and family members for a wonderful dinner.

This time we got there a bit later during our trip, on an evening when we were all perhaps becoming just a bit travel-tired and when we wanted a dinner that wasn’t quite so expensive as some others we had recently enjoyed. One or both of our sons suggested that we meet up at a place in Chinatown again, and since we arrived a bit early I took advantage of the situation and made a few photographs on this wonderful little street, with its beautiful curve, small shops, and wildly colorful store fronts and signs. Most of the time this street was busy with passing pedestrians, but I waited a bit and managed to make this photograph of the empty street in the evening light. The details of such photographs are often fun and intriguing — the picture on the hair salon sign at the left, the bicycle sitting on its rear wheel at the far right, the colorful flags on one store front, and more.

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, Photographs: Urban/Street

Manhattan Traffic

August 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Motion blur abstract of Manhattan traffic

OK, here we go! I’m about to share a string of urban photographs, many of which are from New York City, where I spent slightly more than a week in early August. We were there for several reasons. My wife was attending a music conference at NYU. (A conference of oboe and bassoon players, if you wondered.) Her brother and sister-in-law live in Brooklyn and graciously agreed to host us during our stay, and our two sons also live in Brooklyn. For me this meant that I had the better part of a week to simply head out into Manhattan and Brooklyn, going wherever my intuition took me, and make photographs of the city.

A lot of the photographs fit into the street photography genre — which may seem a bit perplexing to those who know my landscape and nature photography — but this first one is more of an abstraction, created my means of a slow shutter speed and camera motion, most likely as I was crossing some busy street in midtown Manhattan.

Morning Musings

Morning Musings (8/17/14)

August 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

If you don’t already follow The Online Photographer (or “TOP”), wander on over there and take a look. The slightly idiosyncratic blog often offers articles and commentary that provide interesting insights and which might make you look at things a bit differently. I read it regularly.

I’m mentioning TOP this morning because of something I saw there recently, a “something” that is directly related to this post, namely the TOP posts shared as “The Morning Coffee.” These are typically relatively short posts on a variety of subjects and at least giving the feeling of being somewhat informal posts written over a cup of coffee. Hey, I’m usually up early. I drink coffee. I like to write. Hence my own new “Morning Musings” series. We’ll see where it leads.

My “musing” for today relates to something from my recent trip to New York City. The brief story — likely to be expanded upon soon in other posts — is that I got to spend about a week wandering around Manhattan and Brooklyn with a camera. I had been thinking about doing some handheld night street photography for some time, and I had the opportunity on this trip. On one particular night, after emerging from a musical performance at a club, we headed off toward another performance in a nearby park. As we walked, hours after sunset, I pulled out my smaller “street” camera with a f/1.4 lens, raised ISO to 1600 or 3200 and started shooting. The ability to do this — shoot handheld in the middle of the night — was incredibly liberating. I’ve done a lot of tripod-based traditional night photography, but the technology of these newer cameras lets us shoot the night in an entirely different way, capturing quickly appearing subjects and conditions in ways that were essentially impossible only a few years ago. (Photos upcoming in the next week or two.)

Musing written. Coffee consumed. Now off to make some photographs…

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

Family Portrait

March 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brandon, Jameson, Lia – Central Park

A “snap” of family in Central Park, New York City from last December, when we spent a week visiting relatives and wandering around New York City. This photograph was on a cold winter day when we joined throngs of New Yorkers (and, like us, temporary New Yorkers) in the park.

I was shooting mostly in a manner that is much different from the way I might shoot landscape. Using a very small handheld camera and (mostly) a single prime lens, I shot while moving from place to place. Especially in the case of photographs of people, I did not always necessarily try for perfect camera stability—and the resulting motion blur somehow can seem consistent with the experience of the place. This photograph was grabbed very quickly, as we emerged from an underground walkway into the edge of the outside light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: manhattan

Chinatown Street

Manhattan Traffic

Morning Musings (8/17/14)

Family Portrait

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