Tag Archives: photography

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

This Is Jess

Leave a comment
This Is Jess
Door with graffiti and stickers

This Is Jess. New York City. July 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Door with graffiti and stickers

I truly don’t remember this photograph at all! Sometimes when doing street photograph (in this case at the start of five weeks or what was largely street photography) I photograph quickly and then almost forget quite a few of the photographs as I move on to the next thing, trusting that my ideas about the subject will come back when I see the photograph again as I do my post processing. In this case, no such luck!

I don’t usually photograph graffiti — in fact I used to make it my policy to almost never post graffiti or to disfigure tags that the photographs might contain. But in this case there may be enough in the scene to convince me to let it go. The layers of time and culture in this photograph are easy to overlook, but when you stop to think about it they are quite amazing. I’m sure that this wall and old door have stood for a long time, likely created by and for people who would have little concept of how the surroundings have evolved. The “stuff” on the door includes its own kinds of diversity, ranging from informal scrawls to bits of paper that were created with the intention of affixing them to place like this. And on the left we have the bright colors of  the edge of a sign in (I presume) a Chinese language, itself visually contrasting with yet connecting to the newer writings on the green door.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: France, Photographs: Urban/Street

Sidewalk Art, Le Marais

Leave a comment
Sidewalk Art, Le Marais
“Sidewalk Art, Le Marais” — Art presented for along a sidewalk in Le Marais, Paris

Several days into our recent visit to Paris we finally made our way to the Le Marais district, partly because it had been recommended (by our oldest son and others) and partly because we wanted to visit a photography museum found in the area, Maison Européenne de la Photographie. The area proved to be very interesting and to be a wonderful place to photograph.

It now is, from what I could see and what I’ve read, a rather “trendy” place — lots of shops and restaurants and so forth. But it also has a history, and I understand that it managed to escape some of the modernization of Paris that took place since the 1800s, including a proposal to raze the area and even to put a major thoroughfare there. These things didn’t happen, so now there are beautiful old (sometimes very old) buildings along narrow and twisting streets. As in almost every place that visitors go in Paris, there are people selling things on the streets. Most of the products are cheap trinkets, but here it was sidewalk art, and I photographed the display while the artist/vendor was elsewhere for a few moments.

Leave a comment or question using the form. (Click the title to see the full article and to comment if you are viewing it on the home page.)

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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Taking a Break

Leave a comment

Taking a Break
Restaurant staff taking a break in a Florence alley

Taking a Break. Florence, Italy. August 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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 is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Woman on Balcony

Leave a comment

Woman on Balcony
A woman sits on the fire escape balcony of a brick apartment building

Woman on Balcony. New York City. July 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman sits on the fire escape balcony of a brick apartment building

The first stop on our five-week “grand tour” was New York City — our oldest son and our daughter-in-law were getting married. This is the longest the two of us have ever been “on the road,” and before we were finished five weeks later we had been to New York City, London, Paris, Heidelberg, briefly in Munich and Bologna, then the Chianti region between Florence and Siena in Italy, and finally in Florence for a few days. Whew! One thing that came out of visiting all of these places, with between five or six days and up to eight days in each place, is that we got both a sense of the character of each place (though incomplete, of course) and we were able to see the contrasts between them. New York City certainly has its own character, somewhere on the spectrum closer to London than Florence perhaps.

The entire New York visit was not taken up by wedding events, so we did have a chance to get out and explore New York a bit, which we always enjoy. On this afternoon we ended up at the High Line Park, walking part of its length on a hot and humid day the eventually led to some light rain. (That seems to be a theme for us near the High Line.) Since I’ve been to this park before I have gotten to know some of the surroundings, and this particular brick wall of windows and fire escape stairways always attracts my attention. And this isn’t the first time I’ve found an interesting person on that very balcony — somewhere in my collections I’m pretty certain that I have another photograph of someone on this exact same balcony, sitting outside on a similar hot and humid day before the rain arrived.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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