Tag Archives: people

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Seated People, Dog

October 8, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Seated people with a white dog in front of Florence shops on the Ponte Vecchio.

The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge across the Arno River in Florence, and it is covered with buildings, giving it a very different appearance than the typical cross-river bridge. Shops line the bridge and are open during the day, with some staying open into the evening.

It is, of course, a popular tourist spot — and we were tourists! When we walked across the first time it was close to sunset and the place was packed to the point that it was difficult to walk. There was the typical assortment of street artists, musicians, and men hawking cheap souvenirs. The lights were just coming on when I saw this small group of people and their dog sitting on the curb, somehow finding a way to look almost isolated in the midst of the crowd.

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

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street, Photographs: Utah

Walking Man, Mirrored Wall

September 30, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A walking man and other people are reflected in a mirrored wall, London

Here we have (yet another!) photograph of someone using a smart phone in the urban world, though here there are, I think, a few other elements that got my attention. I’m sure that I was paying attention to the continuous stream of people moving along this sidewalk, and I like to think that some sense of their motion comes through in the photograph. The mirrored wall that contains most of the subjects not only let me capture a “double” of the primary subject, but it also let me bring him forward from the reflected background of all the other people who are only visible in the mirrored image. You might also notice some interesting things related to color.

And there are some surprises. I read somewhere that one of the differences between painting and photography is that while the painter personally puts everything on the canvas (at least mostly) and therefore can know it fully, the photographer cannot possibly know every element of the scene. In fact it is common to only realize that the photograph contains unintentional elements after the fact. One of those is present here — look at the head of the man in his reflected image.

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

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man On The Phone

September 29, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man walks along a London street while conversing on the telephone

Recently I’ve been realizing that the image of people using cell phones is quite probably going to one of defining images of this period in time. Being part of it, I’m not sure we are quite conscious of how ubiquitous it is nor of how profoundly it has changed the activities of people and how they act in the urban environment. For example, a few years ago I joked that it used to be that you could tell tourists in the big city by how they wandered around gazing upwards — but that now you can identify them by looking for people walking around while staring straight down and screens.

So this photograph is partly a reference to and inspired by this idea about the phone and its ever-present visually defining role in the current era. Of course it is also about the fellow himself, who has, at least to me, a fascinating appearance. It is also about the surrounding urban landscape with its colors and angles and so forth.

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Taking a Break

September 15, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Restaurant staff taking a break in a Florence alley

The restaurant, just out of sight to the right of the edge of the frame, was nearly across the street from where we stayed for a couple of days in Florence, Italy, along a narrow street roughly between the Duomo and the Uffizi. A friend of ours who had been there before us mentioned it, and we thought about eating there — it looked interesting, but it also looked a bit like something we could see back home. But it continued to intrigue me, and I looked at it every time we walked past.

We were out for a walk on our last evening in Florence, and I was making a lot of night street photographs. The night utterly transforms the scenes — people behave differently, and the varied colors of light paint the walls of buildings. As we returned to the hotel we walked toward the restaurant and I saw a group of employees taking a break in the alley… and quickly photographed them before they returned to work.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: people

Seated People, Dog

Walking Man, Mirrored Wall

Man On The Phone

Taking a Break

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