Tag Archives: monochrome

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
“Gelato Stand, Evening” — People 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.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: People, Photographs: Urban/Street

Selfie, Reflection

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Selfie, Reflection
Reflection of a couple posing for a selfie, Whitney Museum, Manhattan

Selfie, Reflection. New York City. July 3, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Reflection of a couple posing for a selfie, Whitney Museum, Manhattan

I made this photograph when we visited the Whitney Museum on a trip to New York City earlier this year — the new version of the Whitney located in Chelsea near the end of The High Line Park. We were there at least partly to see the Calder exhibit, but also because we like the Whitney itself. I not only like the place (and this is true of other museums I visit) for the work that is exhibited, but also for the photographic opportunities. There are lots of people to see, and this museum incorporates all kinds of other interesting visual opportunities: the architecture of the building, the outside terraces, the views of the surrounding areas.

I made this photograph on one of the outdoor terraces on an upper floor. The terraces provide open views of Manhattan, and they house large works that display well in outdoor spaces. There are always lots of people passing through these spaces, and this couple stopped to make a selfie photo against one of the sculptures, inadvertently positioning themselves where their reflection also incorporated a slightly distorted view of the Manhattan surroundings. The subject of “selfies” is a big one on its own, and I won’t try to take that on in its entirely here. However, people making these photographs of themselves sometimes seem to let down their guard as they temporarily become almost oblivious to their surroundings and they often assemble into interesting group poses.

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: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest

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Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest
Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Just for fun… a fall color photography in black and white! I have the greatest respect for our photographer predecessors who set about photographing the beauty of fall color with only monochromatic shades to work with. It can be done, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as photographing fall color with today’s capable digital cameras. It is all too easy to let those colorful leaves end up having monochromatic tones that aren’t that much different from the same trees in the green season! Light helps, as does some selective use of filters — glass filters in the old days and post-processing analogs applied to digital files today.

I made this photograph close to a rather popular fall color photography location, though the exact location isn’t quite in the usual spot. It presented a challenge or two that I won’t describe here. The light was, to use the old euphemism, “interesting” at this point. The late afternoon light was coming in at a low angle and lighting up the trees nicely, but the sky was a bit tricky. Some high clouds were floating over the Sierra crest peaks, and their brightness posed a dynamic range challenge while their shadows fell across the peaks. There are many things I like about this scene — the way the curving forms of the groves lead away and up toward the Sierra crest peak, the long shadows, the alternation of sunlit ridge and darker valleys, and those distant peaks with a bit of autumn snow dusting their summits.

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.