Tag Archives: people

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.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Little Italy, Evening

August 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Visitors pack closed streets though Manhattan’s Little Italy.

Walking more or less northwest from New York’s Chinatown district after dinner we ended up heading through Little Italy. As we walked on this Sunday evening we started seeing huge crowds of people and we soon figured out why. Apparently the streets through here are closed on Sunday evening, and restaurants tables spill out across the sidewalks, and people end up walking up and down the middle of the streets. The photograph is deceptive — it shows perhaps the smallest number of people that I saw here, and most of the time the streets were packed.

Originally we “planned” (to the extent that we were operating on any kind of plan!) to just walk through here, but it was so lively that we slowed down, stopping for sidewalk gelato, and I made some photographs. The colors were intensified by the diminishing late-day light, and I held my camera above my head and shot blind to get this elevated point of view. Ideally, I think this image works best as a large print, since there are so many small details to look at that aren’t easily visible in this small web version.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Big Wong Restaurant

August 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

New York City street scene, as people pass in front of the Big Wong Restaurant in Chinatown

To an outsider, there are many things that seem to characterize New York City — the noise, the energy, the density of people, the constant motion, the often gritty character of many areas, the unique neighborhoods that bump into one another, the huge number of people out walking, the food, and much more. I’m more familiar with the famous San Francisco Chinatown (which is at least as crowded), and New York’s Chinatown feels vaguely familiar but also quite different. It certainly seems, for the most part, a lot less geared to tourists.

We went there for dinner one evening. After a week of too many expensive dinners we were looking for something both good and less expensive, so we ended up at a place near here that one of our group knew about. After dinner we went out on the streets, where it was now close to twilight. We decided to wander up towards Little Italy, and on the way we quickly passed though more of Chinatown’s narrow streets, and I managed to slow up our progress by stopping to photograph people and storefronts, including this wonderfully named restaurant with a few people and piles of trash outside on the sidewalk.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: people

DUMBO Afternoon

The Selfie

Little Italy, Evening

Big Wong Restaurant

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