Tag Archives: people

Two Women, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Lower Manhattan

September 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two women overlook the East River and Lower Manhattan from the promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge Park

This little spot is very near the water taxi dock in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn and it is in the Brooklyn Bridge Park along the waterfront, so it seems like a popular place to stop, lean against the railings, and take in the view across the water toward Lower Manhattan. While waiting for our water taxi to show up, I spent a little time watching and photographing people here.

Something about this photograph seems classic to me and I think that is why I chose to go with a black and white rendition. The view of Manhattan is almost always interesting, but I also loved the light on this afternoon — it was very intense, centered just out of the frame to the left, and the atmosphere was somewhat soft, with a few small, puffy clouds floating around.

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

Friday Night, Manhattan

September 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People out on a Friday night in Manhattan

On this evening I finally got to seriously try out something that I had been thinking of doing for some time — handheld street photography at night. Current digital cameras are providing low-light capabilities now that were almost unimaginable just a few years ago, to the point that it is possible to shoot at very high ISO setting and shoot in urban darkness almost as if it were daytime. (To be sure, there are some issues related to things like dynamic range, the need to use very large apertures, narrow DOF, dealing with noise in post, etc.)

We had just left a club where we heard a musical performance and we decided to head over to Washington Square where yet another performance was going on. Almost as soon as we left the first building it hit me that this was my opportunity to give this a shot, so I worked with a 23mm (35mm equivalent) f/1.4 lens and cranked up the ISO and started shooting. I quickly noticed that I actually had some exposure headroom, and I could lower ISO stop down a bit. I also quickly became fascinated by the nighttime shadows, which are nothing like what we see during the day. I started looking for bright “pools of light” under artificial lighting and then constructing compositions and waiting for an interesting juxtaposition of people and other elements.

Photographs: New York City

DUMBO Afternoon

September 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People along the waterfront, DUMBO, Brooklyn Bridge Park

I think I was vaguely aware at the time when I made this photograph that I was being affected by a painting that I had seen a few days earlier in Chicago. We traveled from California to New York City by train on this visit, and we stopped for a couple of days in Chicago — since we had to switch trains we figured that this gave us an excuse to visit that city a bit. Among other attractions, the Art Institute of Chicago is there, located in Millennium Park, which was just a short walk from where we were staying. There was a lot to see there, but one of the more famous pieces is Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,” so we had to go see it. I was already familiar with other paintings by Seurat and with this one by means of reproductions, but it is a very different experience to see such a thing in person. I have a habit (perhaps annoying to friends and family members!) of taking a lot of time with original work like this — I can never know when or if I’ll see it again, so I spend enough time going over it, somewhat methodically, that I can begin to see features that aren’t visible with a quicker look and I can also fix many elements of the thing in my mind so that I can recall them later.

As we walked along the Brooklyn waterfront a few days later and paused near the river taxi terminal, I began to look at the people who were busy walking, standing, and making photographs of themselves along the water from a sort of personal Seurat perspective. I waited for a group with an interesting set of clothing colors to arrange themselves in an interesting composition and perhaps create a sense that each of them, individually or in groups, might have a story: a woman stands alone, another looks toward other people, a man squats to make a photograph, a couple in purple and orange converse near the fence, two young women are exercising their dogs, a couple at the right (both of whom wear green) look out of the frame.

For those who many not know, “DUMBO” is the name of an area in Brooklyn — it is located Directly Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Selfie

September 1, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

On a Manhattan sidewalk, three girls dressed in black pose for a selfie as two men walk past.

Here comes another sequence of New York City street photographs, this time with several presented in a wide panoramic format. My most common format uses a 4:3 width:height ratio, but sometimes a photograph seems to work better with something else, and the 2:1 wide panoramic format can create a sense of horizontal space that I like in some photographs. When I made this one I was working very quickly — as you can imagine, this was not exactly a shot that provided me with much time for careful and cautious thought. At the time of exposure I think I might have leaned toward a black and white rendition, in traditional street photography format, but in the end I liked the blue colors of the men’s shirts and of the shaded concrete sidewalk.

I had spotted this group of three young women — girls, really — walking down the street together and having a great time and all wearing roughly similar black outfits. (One imagines them discussing this before meeting up — “I’m thinking of wearing black. How about you?”) There is usually a lot happening on the street, so my attention likely switched away from something else to consider them for only a brief moment, and when I looked back and saw them setting up for that most contemporary ritual, the selfie, I quickly made a few exposures. In an example of lucky timing, the two guys in blue shirts walked into the scene from behind me at just the right moment.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: people

Two Women, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Lower Manhattan

Friday Night, Manhattan

DUMBO Afternoon

The Selfie

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