Tag Archives: new york

Parking Structure

December 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Parking structure and urban scene near the Highline Park in New York City

When in New York City… visit the Highline Park, as we did on this 2010 summer visit. For those who may not know, the Highline Park is a novel New York location, a park high above the streets that occupies the right of way of an old elevated railway. It is widely regarded as one of the most innovative public spaces in this city, and it really is a remarkable place.

It is also a great place to do photography. There are plenty of people subjects there, and there is all of the other stuff that is worth shooting in New York, plus the elevated perspective provides a lot of views that are different from those seen from street level. We’ve all seen this urban parking structures, which stack cars up several deep in order to make more efficient use of limited space. But we don’t often see them from above, where the metal framing suggests planes that aren’t visible from below but which connect in interesting ways with the angled lines and planes of the other nearby buildings.

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

New York Sidewalk, Evening

December 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A busy New York City sidewalk in dusk light

We are fortunate to be able to visit New York City from time to time — perhaps once a year and occasionally more often. To anyone who thinks of me a “that landscape photographer guy,” it might seem a bit odd that I also love the intense urban environment of such a place — but I do. Although it can become overwhelming eventually — as almost everyone says, “I love to visit, but I couldn’t live there.” — it is also energizing. There is so much to see and do, whether or not it involves photography.

I always photograph when I visit New York. I photograph in a different way than I do when I’m out in the American West. For example, I work with handheld cameras and tend to work while on the move. But I think that I also see the place at least a bit through the eyes of a landscape photographer, and I think of the city as a place to photograph the “urban landscape.” Although I’ve done night photography for more than a decade, recently I’ve gotten more interested in handheld urban night street photography. This photograph of a little evening street scene with pedestrians walking in and out of the light pools cast from business windows is one example.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Lake, Central Park

December 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Summer boaters on The Lake, Central Park, Manhattan

After watching a friend take on the task of posting a continuous string of black and white photographs during the holiday season this year, I have posted more monochrome photographs than usual, with a number of them coming from a backlog of older work that sits in the raw file archives. This has provided a bit of a necessary nudge to go back and revisit some of those older photographs. I haven’t taken a very systematic approach to this nostalgic review of the older work, instead almost randomly dropping in on the files from different years and subjects. A recent look at some older Sierra Nevada photographs took me back to 2010, and it wasn’t a long trip from there to a collection of photographs from a summer 2010 visit to New York City.

I think that 2010 was the first time I visited New York City in August. New Yorkers are perhaps rolling their eyes, knowing all about August weather there, but I was innocent. Now I know. (And, strange as it seems, I actually chose to go back this past August! I’m starting to get used to it and to perhaps even embrace the heat and humidity.) The Central Park location of this photograph is probably fairly obvious — we wandered through portions of the park and ended up near The Lake, where park visitors rowed slowly and serenely within sight of Manhattan’s urban buildings.

History, Photographs: Photographers

Holding an Artifact

November 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Holding a Brett Weston negative — “Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1946”

During our visit to the Weston Home at Wildcat Hill in late September, Kim Weston shared a wide range of photographs and photographic objects , and accompanying stories, with us in his studio. (That’s him at the lower right of the frame.) He shared and talked about work by many of the Westons, from Edward Weston to himself. He even passed around various photographs and objects for closer inspection, including this negative of a very important Brett Weston photograph, “Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1946.”

And — no surprise! — he has a lot of stories to tell. If I have this one correct, it goes sort of this way. Brett Weston’s photographs are very much about the print and the initial image in the negative served as source material for the final interpretation. That interpretation was the thing — not the negative. As I understand it, he wanted the prints, not the negatives, to remain as his legacy, and he had announced that we was going to destroy the negatives for many great photographs. He discussed this with Edward (?) Weston, who did not feel the same way about limiting editions and who apparently convinced Brett to let him pick a few negatives to save. Brett agreed, Edward chose, Brett went and brought back the selected negatives… which he had defaced with a hole punch. (You can see the holes near the four corners of this negative.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: new york

Parking Structure

New York Sidewalk, Evening

The Lake, Central Park

Holding an Artifact

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