Tag Archives: state

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

Funeral No Parking

March 19, 2016 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Street signs stored next to a funeral parlor doorway, New York City

I can state with certainty that this is the only time I have made night photographs of funeral homes in Manhattan on Christmas Eve. Go ahead! Prove me wrong! ;-)

So, how did this happen? As many street/urban photographs happen. I have a camera with me wherever I go, day and night, in places like this, and when I see something that catches my eye I make a photograph. We had started the evening by briefly joining the throng up on 5th Avenue where there are tons of holiday lights and displays. After leaving that madhouse we headed down toward Chinatown to find a place where we have had dinner a few times before — but we arrived to find that it had apparently become very popular since our last visit. We were told that the wait might be two hours. So we set out to find something less crowded nearly. We eventually found a nice quite Vietnamese restaurant but first we passed this side street with the doors and glowing windows of this funeral parlor.

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

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

Woman Walking Past Scaffolding

January 29, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A woman walks past scaffolding in front of Manhattan shops

There are several things that I find interesting about this photograph. First, I don’t remember making it! I remember many other subjects from this evening — we had walked across the Williamsburg Bridge, stopped in a tavern, visited Stand Bookstore, and more. But I have no recollection of making this final photograph of the evening. Second, the scaffolding lining the sidewalk and, above where we cannot see it in this photograph, seems like a common feature in Manhattan. I walked through, past, and around scaffold-covered buildings frequent.

My subject here is yet another example of that modern species of human who walks (at least at the moment of my photograph) along city streets and elsewhere, absorbed in the world of that little handheld device and giving no indication of being connected to the surrounding world. OK, I like the light, too. The light from the shop spills out of the front windows and across the sidewalk, creating shadows that are muted and filled by light from the surrounding neighborhood.

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

Green and Blue Wall

January 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Graffiti and poster remnants on a green and blue Brooklyn brick wall.

We arrived in New York late the day before, in time to check in to lodgings and meet our “kids” (two sons and their fiances) for dinner, but there wasn’t a lot of time to get around and see and photograph. The next morning we met up with our youngest son in the more or less the Williamsburg area, and we wandered about, hitting the waterfront of the East River and then finding lunch.

During any bit of urban wandering I’m almost always on the lookout for photographs. Photographing on the street is an exercise in working quickly and being versatile. In most cases I don’t have a specific subject in mind — the closest to that may be a general idea of looking a buildings or people or water or interiors or… In this case I was in an area with a lot of older construction, and we passed through a few spots that were obviously the hope to lots of posters and graffiti. Oddly, since people are sometimes trying to paint out the tagging, there can be many layers of often new paint, posters in various states of decay, and odds and ends of painted words and images. Here the remnants of a poster partially obscured a hand drawn heart on a wall that appeared to have been painted in two not quite identical shades of blue-green.

Photographs: New York City

Two Bridges, East River

December 31, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The East River and Manhattan Bridge, photographed from the Brooklyn Bridge, winter.

During our recent December 2015 week-plus in New York City we stayed only a five or ten minute walk from the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Primarily that put us in a great area for food and other things and very close to a bunch of subway stations, but it also meant that a walk on the bridge was almost inevitable. On this day we had a date at the Metropolitan Opera in the evening, but we found ourselves with just enough time to wander onto the bridge before we had to go to Manhattan.

This bridge is, of course, a tremendously popular place these days. Even on a cold day after Christmas there were hordes of people walking across. I think I’ve made the classic photograph of the bridge towers and cables before, so I was looking for something that wasn’t that. As I walked along I noticed how the Manhattan Bridge towers (and other urban landscape elements in other photographs not shown here) lined up between the cables, and I soon found this spot that placed parts of the bridge structure in the foreground.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: state

Funeral No Parking

Woman Walking Past Scaffolding

Green and Blue Wall

Two Bridges, East River

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