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Museum Windows, Shadows

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Museum Windows, Shadows
Silhouetted figures, windows, and beams of light, Metropolitan Museum

Museum Windows, Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Silhouetted figures, windows, and beams of light, Metropolitan Museum

This is a second “take” on a location I photographed between Christmas and New Year’s Day last year, when we spent a week in New York. It was an exceptionally cold week, and on a few days we decided that we really needed to find indoor activities. (On other days we defied the cold and wind and walked all over Manhattan anyway.) One of the reliable options is a visit to a museum, so we headed to the Metropolitan, where we wanted to see the David Hockney show. You can’t see it in this photograph, but the museum was packed with other visitors who were also looking for a warm, indoor option.

We passed through this room twice, on our way to and from a section of the museum with relatively modern art that we wanted to view. This space is really essentially a very wide walkway, though I suspect that it could also be used for exhibits at times. The row of tall windows along the southern wall opened to Central Park and, further away, the Manhattan skyline. Lots of people took advantage of the wide window sills as a place to sit. The resulting effects of light were intriguing — backlit people in a variety of poses, the faint image of the park and city outside, and the alternative effects of shadows and reflections from the bright light streaming through the windows.

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: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Scrim, Bars, Shadows

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Scrim, Bars, Shadows
Winter tree branches cast soft shadows on scrim window covering

Scrim, Bars, Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Winter tree branches cast soft shadows on scrim window covering

I was tempted to write little or nothing about this photograph and just let it stand as is. But that would break with my tradition of posting something about every photograph! (Apologies to those of you who aren’t fans of the writing! ;-) The subject is the conjunction of a shadow and the bars of a window.

The photograph illustrates, perhaps, the usefulness of bringing a camera along even in situations where photography isn’t your main goal. We were in New York for a week in late December, and on this freezing cold winter day we did what so many do on such days — we headed for the warmth of a museum, in this case the Metropolitan Museum. Our primary goal was to see the large David Hockney show, but there were other things to see as well. At one point, while considering what to do next, we ended up in a familiar gallery off in the distant reaches of this large and confusing museum. At one end of the room was a stairwell. Southwest facing windows were covered with a sort of scrim that muted the direct light, and winter-bare tree branches cast shadows on it.

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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Museum Lobby

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Museum Lobby
Visitors milling about in the lobby of SFMOMA

Museum Lobby. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Visitors milling about in the lobby of SFMOMA

It has been a while, and I was more than due for one of my periodic walking days in San Francisco. As per the usual plan, I was out the front door of our house long before dawn, to the train station by bus, and then by train to San Francisco, arriving just before sunrise. There were clouds over the City to my north and west, so I headed to the edge of the Bay, where the skies were clear to the east and early sun shone through on the shoreline and the City. I photographed along the waterfront for a while, and eventually wanted past the Ferry Building and up into the City north of Market Street.

I had a plan to circle back to SFMoMA by late morning, since the expansive Walker Evans show ends there in about a week. I arrived and took a break from my own photograph to view his and that of his contemporaries. (To anyone in the SF Bay Area who likes this sort of thing, go now! There is a ton of work in this show, and it ends a few days into February.) Evans evokes a mixed response for me. I share an interest in some of the subjects that interested him, including certain kinds of shops and other urban structures. His photographs of common tools are exquisite, and the WPA photographs of sharecroppers are really great. Other work impresses me less, and some of the photographs of objects and buildings (though not all of the latter!) impress me at times as being snapshots. But still, there’s a lot of great work in the show, and Evans had a big influence on the ways that many of us see. Once I completed my time in the Evans exhibit, it was time to leave and head back to the train station. But before I left I made a few photographs inside the museum, where I saw for the first time the patters of these lights reflecting on the floor in many places.

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

Stairwell, Winter Shadows

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Stairwell, Winter Shadows
Shadows of bare winter trees on windows in a Metropolitan Museum stairwell.

Stairwell, Winter Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Shadows of bare winter trees on windows in a Metropolitan Museum stairwell.

This is perhaps a bit of a mind game of a photograph. I’ll explain why in a moment. I made it while visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on a cold winter day last December. We were there mainly to see the David Hockney exhibit and then, once we realized what it was, the remarkable Michelangelo exhibit nearby. It is also true that we were there on that particular day partly because that was when we happened to be in New York, partly because we wanted to see the exhibits, and partly because it was a freezing cold day! For visitors to New York City in winter, the museums are good options when it is just plain too cold for a lot of outdoor stuff. (Nonetheless, we still did do a lot of walking in this frigid weather.)

This little corner of the museum is at the end of a series of galleries where an open stairway connects several floors together. There are windows, but they are covered with a sort of fabric scrim that allows diffused light to enter, blocks views of the outdoor landscape, but does project the shadows of nearby trees. The bare, winter branches silhouetted on this window and others nearby caught my attention. But the more I looked the more I saw the almost bizarre and perspective-defying combination of lines from the angled wall, the floor and handrail, and more. In the end, this photograph is perhaps of several things, but also about the strange conjunction of their forms.

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.