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People Standing By Window

People Standing By Window
Two people stand against a dark wall next to a window, Museum of Modern Art.

People Standing By Window. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two people stand against a dark wall next to a window, Museum of Modern Art.

This photograph comes from a Manhattan visit a few years back. We usually are there for at least a week each year — though we have not been back since before the start of the pandemic. We miss the place! We have some traditions when it comes to these visits. One is to indulge me in a lot of “museum time.” (The amount of time I’m willing to spend in such places occasionally makes me the butt of family jokes.) We visited the Museum of Modern Art on this visit, and the photograph comes from there.

I’m often a bit surprised — though by how you’d think I would not be — by how interesting I find museums as photographic spaces. They are full of interesting and sometimes unusual architecture, and they are often designed to incorporate a lot of investing lighting, especially natural lighting. In many cases there is some sort of central atrium or similar that creates a tall, vertical open area… and that provides some wild and off-kilter angles of subjects that would look quite different if photographed on their own level. Here a pair of people stands at the base of a stairway, positioned in the angle between a nearly-black wall and a window.


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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Pedestrian Landscape

Pedestrian Landscape
A few through upper story windows toward street level pedestrians and geometries.

Pedestrian Landscape. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A few through upper story windows toward street level pedestrians and geometries.

This is one in a series of photographs from this spot and of this scene, mostly made on this visit to San Francisco, though there are a few made on other dates, too. The photograph is, obviously, made from a location up high in an urban building — high enough that it was possible to get a nearly vertical perspective on the street below.

There are a few things going on here that were interesting to me as I photographed. I’m photographing through the tinted glass of a modern building. Recently I’ve been interested in the effects of glass on iight and subjects in situations where its presence isn’t obvious. Here it lens an unusual, cool tone to the colors of the scene. As I photographed small numbers of people passed by on the sidewalk. It was interesting to watch their interactions as they approached and passed on another. In addition, from this perspective things in the scene that would ordinarily be almost invisible become central, especially the various kinds of geometries throughout the scene.


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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Detail, Palace of Fine Arts

Detail, Palace of Fine Arts
Detail of a small section of the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Detail, Palace of Fine Arts. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a small section of the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Perhaps I was channelling my inner Atget when I made this photograph a few years back. I was wandering around San Francisco with a camera — a favorite activity in non-pandemic times — and I ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts near the waterfront. It is a remarkable place with a remarkable history. Originally constructed as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, it was the only structure that wasn’t taken down afterwards. Originally meant to be a temporary feature of the Exposition, it deteriorated and was eventually completely taken down in the 1960s and reconstructed by the mid-1970s. .

Something in the photograph illustrates how I do (and do not) see when I’m making photographs. One one hand I and other photographers often see things that others might miss. On the other hand, because we are focused on one way of seeing our subject we may entirely miss things that are completely obvious to others. Sometimes we “discover” these elements of our photographs later. (Someone pointed out that a difference between photography and painting is that the photographer cannot know everything in the image.) In this case, it was only years later that I noticed the rather striking symbols that appear on the surface of this building — symbols that no sane person would include today. This led me to some quick research that suggests that in 1915, and before the atrocities of WWII, the symbol in question had an entirely different meaning.


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 | FacebookEmail

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Right Angles, MOMA Courtyard

Right Angles, MOMA Courtyard
A study in right angles, MOMA courtyard, Manhattan

Right Angles, MOMA Courtyard. © Copyright 2010 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A study in right angles, MOMA courtyard, Manhattan.

This is a photograph from nearly a decade ago, made on one of our semi-regular visits to New York City. For some reason I ended up in the archive of raw files from that visit recently and I ended up working on this photograph. It turns out that it is quite similar to another I made at this same spot, but there are some subtle but important distinctions that convinced me to work on this version.

The camera position is a window facing this courtyard, a spot that most people probably walk right past on their way between floors at the Museum of Modern Art. I think I may first have been attracted by the elevated viewpoint, looking down into the courtyard where people may sit or walk. I also was fascinated by the dense cubic forms of the buildings and the strong perspective lines that they form.


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 | FacebookEmail

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.


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