Tag Archives: photography

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Summer Evening, Little Italy

March 12, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People crowd the streets of Little Italy on a warm summer evening in Manhattan

For some reason, I too often find myself in New York in the middle of August. Not that I dislike New York — actually I love the place, for wandering, for photography, for museums, for food, for many things. It has been almost six months since I was last there and I already feel like I’m overdue for a visit. The issue is with August. As my sons, who live there, have told me, August is perhaps the least comfortable time to visit. it tends to be hot and muggy, and this is why many New Yorkers pick this time to be somewhere else.

But even though I know this I have probably made half of my New York visits during this month. It has become almost a standing joke in our household. On this 2014 August day we had been in Chinatown looking for food, and afterwards we walked up and into Little Italy, where on summer evenings like this one the streets are filled with people, looking for espresso and gelato.

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

Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shop Window, Shadows

March 9, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon sun casts shadows on display in a shop window

We headed to Southern California just after the New Year. It was an excuse to take the Pacific Coast Highway down the California coast — we were fortunate to do this before winter storms forced a long-term closure! — and to visit various family members. Between the scheduled events we wandered a bit and visited whatever nearby thing seemed interesting.

We spent this afternoon wandering downtown Pasadena. It was a fairly lazy day — we had the afternoon pretty much free, with nothing on the calendar but an evening get-together. I made this photograph as the low-angle afternoon winter light slanted across the street and through the windows of this store to produce complex patterns of reflections, text, and the store’s interior.

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

Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Black and White Stripes

February 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white strips on a bus stop billboard

For a guy who photographs landscapes, shooting street photography can be liberating and a whole lot of fun. Consider: Rather than carrying a large tripod, a big camera, a bag full of lenses — not that I’m complaining! — I can go out with a camera I can hold in one hand, usually with a single prime lens, and I can simply respond immediately to whatever I see. Subjects can include commercial signs, architecture, people, you name it. On a practical note, photographing this way helps me tune up my “seeing” so that I more quickly can find and figure out how to photograph things.

We were killing time in the late afternoon in Pasadena, California, between a midday event and a rendezvous for dinner in the evening. We walked some, hung out in a little place for a while, then walked more, had coffee, and walked again. This pattern was part of an advertising graphic on a sign at a bus stop, if I recall correctly.

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

Fishing Lab, Night

February 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Employees take a break outside and customers enter the Fishing Lab, Florence

If you have noticed an abundance of night photography in my posts this week, there is a reason. Today is the opening for the “Nocturnes & Noir” exhibit at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in San Francisco, a juried exhibit of night photography that includes a few of my photographs. If you are in The City, come and join us at the opening reception at 5:30-8:00PM at the Center, 50 Scott Street, in San Francisco.

I made this photograph in Florence, Italy on a lovely evening last summer, our final one in that city. We passed this restaurant while walking back to our hotel, which was very close to this spot, and the scene caught my attention on a number of levels. It is full of contrasts: between the patrons in the brightly lit doorway and the employees taking a break in the alley lit by streetlights, between the brown-pink tones of the front wall of the restaurant on the right and the green tones on the left. There’s more, but I’ll leave it to you to ponder! By the way, even though the restaurant intrigued me and even though we were staying right up the street, we never stopped to eat there. If I recall, someone suggested that it might have been a bit too familiar of an experience from Americans used to eating in big American cities, and we were more interested in trying to experience something more Italian. This morning I took a look at their website and read a bit more… and now it sounds kind of interesting!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: photography

Summer Evening, Little Italy

Shop Window, Shadows

Black and White Stripes

Fishing Lab, Night

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