Tag Archives: monochorme

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Street, Buildings, Shadows

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Street, Buildings, Shadows
Afternoon shadows fall across buildings and a narrow street in Tuscany

Street, Buildings, Shadows. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon shadows fall across buildings and a narrow street in Tuscany.

This photograph is the second half of a pair similar photographs I made during this visit to a vineyard in Tuscany a few years back. The location (Castello de Ama) features a small central area of stone buildings, amounting to a very small village, surrounded by vineyards. As you can guess, that it was pretty much “typical Tuscany,” which is a very good thing.

Arriving towards the middle of the day, the light was intense during our entire visit, aside from a very few passing clouds. To this Californian there is something both familiar and different about Tuscan light. The intensity is similar, especially at midday during the summer, and stark contrasts between light and shadow are common. But the Italian light seems to me to be softer, or perhaps more accurately the atmosphere seems softer, perhaps as a result of humidity. This photograph and the one I posted earlier both feature stone buildings, a bit of a narrow street, and dark midday shadows.

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: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building And Shadow, Tuscany

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Building And Shadow, Tuscany
A cloud drifts in the sky above stone buildings in Tuscany

Building And Shadow, Tuscany. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A cloud drifts in the sky above stone buildings in Tuscany

If you follow my posts you may have noticed quite a few post from Italy recently, and you might be wondering why. Have you been to Italy? ;-) OK, there are more objective reasons I can share. I make a habit of reviewing older work a year or more after I make the photographs. I see the images differently with a bit more subjective distance from the actual experience. There’s another reason, too, and it ties the place I live (California) to Italy it ways that have only recently made more sense to me. This spring and summer as I’ve walked trails in California’s grass and oak lands on warm days, it has hit me just how similar the experiences can be. And a visit to an area winery on such a day reinforced that feeling. So I suppose I’ve been enjoying both the pleasant memories of the 2016 visit from which this photograph comes and the realization that I live in a place that shares some Italy’s pleasant features.

This is one of a pair of related photographs I made at an Italian vineyard and winery we visited — both focus on the stone buildings and midday shadows. (The related image will show up here in a later post.) The vineyard centers on a very old hamlet consisting of stone buildings surrounded by vineyard. We were there in the middle of the day, and the unique Italian light was wonderful. I’m not quite sure how to describe it in words, but it has some remarkable combination of the intensity of southern light along with the softness of the Italian atmosphere.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Tourists Walking

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Tourists Walking
Tourists on a late-night walk passed closed Chinatown shops in San Francisco

Tourists Walking. San Francisco, California. September 5, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tourists on a late-night walk pass closed Chinatown shops in San Francisco

This is (yet another!) night street photography image made on one of my summer night walks in The City, in this case between roughly Union Square and almost to North Beach. A group of us meets up to photograph these subjects every so often. We begin before sunset and then continue walking, watching, and photographing right on into the night.

I recently read a nice description of part of what is appealing about photographing the street at night. In the daytime everything is more or less evenly lit, but at night small groups move into and out of the light, becoming “spotlighted” against the backdrop of the night. In places where we might see undifferentiated subjects in the daytime, subjects that pass though localized pools for light acquire more importance, and other elements of the scene recede. Here a small group of slightly uncomfortable-looking tourists shuffles past the closed up storefronts of Chinatown. Something about the group does not look entirely comfortable with their surroundings.

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

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

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Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter
Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter. New York City. December 30, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The curving driveway at the Cloisters Museum, New York City

We were in New York City during the final week of 2013, visiting family and doing the usual New York things – which, for me, always includes visiting museums and making photographs. We had visited The Cloisters, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but far uptown, on a previous visit – but having not planned very well we arrived on a day when the place was closed! So we only were able to wander around the grounds outside and the surrounding park lands and then down into town below. This time we checked more carefully, and found that not only was it open but that we could use our Metropolitan of Art passes that we used the previous day.

It was a cold day, and when we got off of the long subway ride up from lower Manhattan we were a bit surprised by the wind blowing at Fort Tryon and we didn’t waste too much time in heading over to the museum. I recalled this curving, cobble stone driveway from our previous visit, when we walked up it to get to the front entrance. This time we came from the side and saw it from the top, curving away and toward the barren trees around the museum and cold scene of the city down below the hill in the distance.

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.