Tag Archives: painting

W!

January 10, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

“W!” — Colorful painting and graffiti on metal door, New York City

Continuing my current pattern of wild back-and-forth swings among subjects, today I retreat from the foggy California wetlands and head back to New York City for some wild color. There’s nothing in the photograph to let you know this, but it was a bitterly cold winter day when I made the photograph. Almost nothing stops me from walking with my camera when I visit New York, though the 20 degree (and colder!) temperatures and biting winds did their best on this day. We started walking in Lower Manhattan, near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal (a very windy place!) and headed uptown on a somewhat random path. The route took us through some places you might not bother to visit on a tourist trip to the city, but it did turn up subjects like this intense example of street art painted on the roll-up door of a small business. If memory serves, this was the day that we finally made it to Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant. As we walked and got colder and colder, the thought of borscht and other goodies became more and more attractive. Veselka did not disappoint.

About this photograph and its dissonance with other work I post, such as wilderness landscapes, seascapes, and migratory birds. I know that some photographers prefer to focus on a particular range of subjects. (There are fine reasons for making that choice, in fact.) But I have at least a couple of reasons for photographing a wider range of subjects. First, I come from a background in music, where the idea of performing only one style of music (say, Baroque trio sonatas) all the time seems incredibly constraining — so seeking out a wider range seems nature to me. Second, I like to think that these different subjects are still united by whatever it is that constitutes my way of seeing… and that there might be a bit of the landscape photographer in the city and a bit of the street photographer in the landscape work.

TWO

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Hockney Observed

December 30, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two museum visitors observe a David Hockney Painting

We have been in New York City during the past week or so, on one of our frequent trips to visit sons and daughters-in-law there… and of course to also simply be in New York. (And, did I also mention “eat in New York?”) It has been cold — something like 10-15 degrees below normal during our visit — and among the practical cold weather activities here are museum visits. We already knew we wanted to see this David Hockney exhibit — we had seen the big Hockney exhibit in San Francisco a few years ago, and we just saw a SF Opera production of “Turandot” that used a Hockney-designed set.

So we joined the throngs on a very cold day at the Metropolitan Museum and went inside to see this exhibit. (Having not done our research ahead of time, we were unaware of the Michelangelo show also taking place, but we managed to visit that, too.) The exhibit was, not surprisingly, very popular and crowded, with a variety of work from across Hockney’s career — lots of the usual stuff, including two of his Grand Canyon landscape paintings. I made this photograph as two people stopped to view one of them.

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

Two Women, Street Art Vendors

July 27, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two women at a street art vendor beneath an umbrella, Manhattan

I recently gave a talk on street photography to a local camera club in the South San Francisco Bay Area. It was the first time I’ve done a talk on this subject, so I spent more time that might be typical considering how to present the subject and how to illustrate some of my ideas about it. Since I don’t like to think there is only one way (or a “right way”) to photograph street or any other subject, I decided that part of the talk would involve looking at various ways to approach street subject. These could include street landscapes, street portraiture, people in groups, and much more — and the ways to photograph could range from very fast and spontaneous to as slowly and carefully as with any other subject.

This photograph came from the fast and spontaneous approach — so much so that I later don’t even recall making the photograph! (That is unusual — I typically have some recall of every photograph, and sometimes I remember a whole lot about it.) We were on a walk in Manhattan, likely heading uptown from the Little Italy area, and I had my camera out and in hand and was in a shooting mode in which I work very quickly — see subject, make photograph. I might take no more than a second or two to contemplate a composition, instead working very instinctively. There must have been something about the almost furtive appearance of the two women and something about the art for sale.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Corner Store With Boarded-Up Windows

May 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A corner store with boarded-up windows in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

There probably isn’t a whole lot to say about the subject of this photograph other than it is a boarded-up corner store in the Chinatown area of San Francisco, photographed in morning light last July. The components of the scene are kind of odd, I think: a bit of a flag, green awnings and painted wall, the slanting sidewalk with some poles and boxes, and the layers of older and newer boards and graffiti over the windows. I also though the light was interesting, partly because it was short period when the San Francisco fog is breaking up and the light is brighter but still soft, and partly because of the diagonal shadows cast across the vertical and horizontal shapes of the wall.

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