Tag Archives: stone

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Silver Sandals

May 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A person wearing silver sandals walks across wet concrete and stone, Trafalgar Square, London

We ended up in Trafalgar Square in the late afternoon. If I recall correctly, we were sort of between planned activities, so we just wandered around here a bit without any particular goal in mind —I think the plan was to meet up with others a bit later and head of to do something. Trafalgar is a busy place, surrounded by traffic and filled with tourists and others. This can make provide quite an opportunity for street photography, with the potential for just about anything to happen and for any sort of person to walk by.

Before long a cleaning crew showed up and went to work on a section of the square when lots of people had been congregating, using high pressure water to clean off the accumulated grime. Their method of clearing the area was fascinating. They blocked off a small section and then began spraying, gradually pushing out the boundaries, and spraying enough water to persuade those close by to move away. In the aftermath of some of this spraying, a person wearing silver sandals walked along this linear section of the square, with alternating stone, reflections, and shadows beyond.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Rock and Roots

April 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Long roots extend across Utah sandstone

This was a sort of casual photograph, made while wandering around near our backcountry camp in southern Utah. We arrived in the afternoon, set up camp, and had a bunch of time to kill — time to eat, make plans, hang out, hike, take a nap, and explore. I probably did a bit of all of those things, but eventually decided to take my smaller camera and wander off into the surrounding countryside.

Eventually I ended up ascending a sandstone hill, and from the top I had open views of the surrounding terrain. But the closer subjects were perhaps even more interesting — the curving shapes of the sandstone, the small hollows that were filled with red sand, the plants trying to eke out a living in this spare and rocky area. In several places I found plants that had sent roots or stems over great distances across bare rock, perhaps trying to find pockets of water or moist soil.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Urban Life, Manhattan

September 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A woman sits in the sun on a stone bench against the wall of an urban building and beneath the shadows of lights and a security camera

I often wonder at the urban environment and how some places seem completely disconnected from the natural world that is how home. (No, I’m not an anti-urban or anti-city person, and I really love visiting New York. But still…) The almost entirely constructed environment is, in many ways, a marvel. The noise, the people, the constant motion can all be energizing. But eventually, at least for me, I reach my limit and I need a quiet time out to recover. And from time to time I need to completely escape from places like this.

I was just below Central Park one morning, where I had gone with a plan in mind of walking the perimeter of the park and photographing. (I almost completed this goal before the day ended, but ran out of time just a bit short of where I had started, when I realized that I was to meet up with some other people.) Before starting up the east side of the park I first went south a bit looking for breakfast and coffee, and I found this small courtyard near when I ate. I saw several things here that drew me to make a photograph — the solitary figure on the bench looking out of the frame, how small the position of her body and her position within the frame makes here appear, the cold and lifeless nature of the space in which she sits, the slightly ominous lights and their shadows above, and the even more ominous small security camera at upper right, probably watching and recording everything… including me as I made my photograph.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects

The Cloisters

March 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Large stone room at the Cloisters museum, Tryon Park, New York City

The Cloisters is a facility that is a (remote) part of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, located way uptown at Fort Tryon along the Hudson River not too far from the George Washington Bridge. It was constructed as a sort of showplace for various elements from early European architecture and art, and it feels far removed from much of the rest of the New York experience, at least to this Californian. We had visited, or tried to visit, on a previous trip to New York, going all the way up there only to find that we had picked the one day each week when it was closed! So getting back there and going inside was on our agenda during our late 2013 visit.

The weather and light affect my response to such places, and this was a gray winter day. We took the subway up from lower Manhattan, and when we got off at Fort Tryon it was very cold, very gray, and quite windy as we walked to the Cloisters. Once inside, the light coming in from courtyards and windows was soft and diffused, and I thought the light in this room was especially beautiful. Some light was coming in from outside through the small window at the right, but out of the frame to the left there is a large open courtyard that was also spilling light in from that direction.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: stone

Silver Sandals

Red Rock and Roots

Urban Life, Manhattan

The Cloisters

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