Tag Archives: new york

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

Pedestrians, Mosco Street

January 26, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pedestrians walk up Mosco Street on a rainy Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in Manhattan, and we ended up in Chinatown at restaurant where we’ve eaten on this night in the past — but we discovered that it has apparently become popular since the last time we visited. The wait for a table (for our rather large group) was going to be at least 90 minutes, so we decided to look elsewhere. After figuring out that everything nearby was just about as crowded, we headed down the short length of Mosco Street to find a place with some open tables nearby.

This photograph illustrates one of the things that fascinates me about urban night photography, namely the wildly diverse light sources. Stop and consider the range of intense colors in this scene — the bright yellow light of the old street lamps along the right side of the street, the more neutral light on the left side from more modern lights, the spots of intense red and blue from store signs. Because it had rained, the streets were reflective, and they also picked up the wash of colors. A couple of people walk toward the camera on the left, casting shadows, and a solitary figure is in the yellow light along the brick wall on the right.

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

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

Halal Food Cart, Night

January 24, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A sidewalk halal food cart at night, Manhattan

These food carts and lots of other similar versions are all over Manhattan. I know that isn’t news to New Yorkers, but it is a bit impressive to those of us who visit the place. I have yet to eat at one, but my sons tell me that the food isn’t bad.

I photographed this one (obviously!) at night as we wandered around a crowded portion of Fifth Avenue on Christmas Eve, not far from Rockefeller Center and lots of other stuff that drew huge crowds there on this evening. Against that dark background, the wildly lit cart, festooned with colorful signs describing the food and stacked with bottles of soda was surrounded in a cloud of smoke from food preparation.

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

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

Buddha Bodai One

January 23, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People assemble outside of Buddha Bodai One on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in New York City, and after joining the throngs up on Fifth Avenue we headed down to China Town for dinner, planning to eat at a place that we’ve gone to in the past. We arrived and it was surprisingly crowded and when I asked I was told that the wait would be “an hour and a half or longer!” Hey, the food is good… but not that good, so we set out to find an alternative. We wandered the area a bit, figured out that just about everything on Mott Street was similarly crowded, and then headed off to a different street where we found a quieter Vietnamese place.

While wandering Mott Street to look for an alternative I kept the camera out and made a series of photographs of scenes along this street. It was a great spot to photograph, with lots of people who were often somewhat static in front of businesses and restaurants, and streets so narrow that signs from lights tended to fill in the shadows across the street. For me the elements of a photograph in a place like this include the light itself, whether flowing across sidewalks and into the streets or the light of the business signs; lots of color; and people assembling themselves into interesting arrangements. Here many of the individuals in the group are doing interesting things — a woman pushes a child in a stroller (which, for some reason, is starting to be a motive in my street photography), another woman seems to be slightly off-balance, a couple is in a darker area off to the right, and an older man stands along in front of a stairway, looking alone and slightly uncomfortable.

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

Lower Manhattan, Bridge Cables

January 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Lower Manhattan as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge

In late December 2015 we spent a week in New York, staying in Brooklyn very close to the Bridge. For most of the week we mostly didn’t pay a lot of attention to this landmark, but near the end of our visit we had some time to kill one morning before meeting our sons in Manhattan, so we decided to take the famous walk out onto the bridge. It was a fairly cold morning, threatening rain, so the scene had a wintry appearance. That didn’t stop the crowds though, and we shared the bridge with lots of other walkers.

Photographing from the bridge I made a conscious decision to not make “that photograph” of the cables leading up to the towers. Instead I looked to subjects that included the cables and other elements of the bridge structure either as the primary subject or as part of the setting for other subjects. I decided to “play” a bit in post with this photograph. One way to stretch post-processing skills is to think about how to replicate effects that we see in the work of other photographers. This isn’t about imitating them — it is about trying to broaden one’s skills as a photographer. In this case, I went towards (but not all the way to) a kind of processing that I see in some currently popular urban and architectural photography… and I learned a few things by doing so.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: new york

Pedestrians, Mosco Street

Halal Food Cart, Night

Buddha Bodai One

Lower Manhattan, Bridge Cables

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