Tag Archives: new york

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Manhattan Sidewalk Scene

January 7, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pedestrians on a Manhattan sidewalk on a cloudy winter morning.

This is one of those street photographs that I probably can’t fully explain to viewers. I’ll try, but it simply may or may not work for you — and it certainly is, at least superficially, not much like my landscape photography. Or is it? When I’m out and about in an urban area, sometimes I start to look beyond the general hubbub of the scene and I began to spot elements that I find fascinating: a particular person, a relationship of colors, light in unexpected places, juxtapositions of people doing things that may be related or unrelated, and transitory moments that are gone as quickly as they appear.

When I’m in this mode of seeing I often stop and watch the scene, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know in advance quite what it will be, but I know that the potential is there. (This, in fact, is one similarity to photographing the natural world, where more things than you might imagine are the result of simply being there at the right time and watching.) Here something about the front of this building caught my attention, and there was a steady stream of people passing by. (Of course there was — this is Manhattan!) At the moment of this exposure a bunch of things happened — somehow there are two strollers in the scene. Several people are engrossed by their smartphones. The woman at the far right is in a surprising and somewhat contorted position, and everything seems to have stopped in some sort of tableau.

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

8 AV and Jane St

January 6, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A winter evening at the corner of 8th Avenue and Jane Street, Manhattan

Continuing my photographic bipolar swings between the natural world and the human world, here is another street photograph. It ties in with a couple of things that I’ve been thinking about recently in my street photography. First, it is an example of night street photography, shot handheld in near darkness using a small camera and high ISO. A year and a half ago I suddenly realized that this kind of photography had become a realistic possibility with the newer high ISO cameras. As a person who has long done long-exposure night photography from the tripod, this was truly a revelation. Secondly, I’m crazy about photographing lighted buildings, stores, restaurants and the light that spills from them onto the sidewalk, street, and anyone who happens to be passing by.

Aside from the general way that I’m always on the lookout for such things, this photograph was almost an accident. We had spent the afternoon at the new Whitney Museum. Those who know me have come to understand my predilection for spending way too much time going way too slowly through museums, and those people eventually give up and move on to other things, leaving me to continue ambling past the art. On this visit some of the people I was with had more or less “done” the Whitney in about and hour and a half — at which point I had more or less finished one floor of the place! We decided that they would all go ahead and find a place to eat and drink, and they ended up at a little tavern across the street from this photograph. I showed up hours later and joined them for food and beer, and we finally left the place after dark. As soon as I walked outside I saw this building across the street.

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

Accessible Entrance

January 4, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A metal door with an accessibility sign

OK, how to explain a photograph like this one? On the first full day of our recent visit to New York City we were out walking around in the Williamsburg vicinity in Brooklyn, and I was taking in the combination of very old stuff, very new stuff, and some very worn and dilapidated stuff. Even for a photographer used to photographing street subjects in San Francisco, many New York neighborhoods are, as they say, photographically “target rich environments,” with lots of things to see.

If I recall correctly, we had walked down a street toward the East River waterfront, passing though an area of older industrial buildings that seems to be converting to modern tech and commercial space. All I remember of the making of this photograph is that I made it more or less while passing by. I was attracted by the wild color and by the seemingly odd placement of the accessibility sign on what looked like a rather unfriendly entrance door.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Construction Site, Hudson Yards

January 2, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Construction work on the foundation of a new building at Hudson Yards

Along a section of the west shoreline of New York City there is a monumental construction project, mostly above the Hudson Yards, where there is a huge train yard. As I understand it, because the train yard cannot be moved, the gigantic towers being constructed here must be built on top of the rail yard, which seems like an almost unimaginable construction challenge. When finished, the train yard will still be there, but beneath the absolutely huge collection of towers housing businesses and residences. The project has already been going on for years, and I understand that it will not be complete until something after 2020.

Since the new upper end of the High Line Park wraps around the site, there are plenty of opportunities to photograph the work from good vantage points. Most of my photographs were looking across the site or up at the towers, but in this case I simply leaned out over the edge of the High Line and pointed the camera almost straight down, where a small crew was working on the foundation of some new structure amidst a scene of great complexity.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: new york

Manhattan Sidewalk Scene

8 AV and Jane St

Accessible Entrance

Construction Site, Hudson Yards

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