Tag Archives: street

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Wall, Man Walking

September 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man walks on a painted sidewalk in Manhattan, New York City

I made this little “grab shot” along a narrow and curving street in New York City’s Chinatown district, probably as we were waiting for others to arrive for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. Given the way my photographic eye works, I first noticed the pattern from the metal door and brick walls, with lines converging as the sidewalk traveled further down the street. I picked this spot because of some of the things that interrupted that pattern — the spilled paint on the sidewalk, the doors, and the utility pole.

Then I waited and watched. In almost all cases it will be little more than a moment or two before someone interesting wanders into this urban landscape and humanizes it in one way or another. I got lucky here, as this fellows attire fit with the colors of the existing scene, and I was able to photograph him just as he passed and walked across the paint-spill section of the sidewalk, with his face invisible to the camera.

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: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Friday Night, Manhattan

September 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People out on a Friday night in Manhattan

On this evening I finally got to seriously try out something that I had been thinking of doing for some time — handheld street photography at night. Current digital cameras are providing low-light capabilities now that were almost unimaginable just a few years ago, to the point that it is possible to shoot at very high ISO setting and shoot in urban darkness almost as if it were daytime. (To be sure, there are some issues related to things like dynamic range, the need to use very large apertures, narrow DOF, dealing with noise in post, etc.)

We had just left a club where we heard a musical performance and we decided to head over to Washington Square where yet another performance was going on. Almost as soon as we left the first building it hit me that this was my opportunity to give this a shot, so I worked with a 23mm (35mm equivalent) f/1.4 lens and cranked up the ISO and started shooting. I quickly noticed that I actually had some exposure headroom, and I could lower ISO stop down a bit. I also quickly became fascinated by the nighttime shadows, which are nothing like what we see during the day. I started looking for bright “pools of light” under artificial lighting and then constructing compositions and waiting for an interesting juxtaposition of people and other elements.

Photographs: New York City

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.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Walking Man With Child

September 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man carrying a child walks along a Manhattan street

Beyond the most general location — “Manhattan” — I’m not certain at the moment where I made this photograph, though there is a good chance that it was in Manhattan between roughly NYU and Grand Central Station. It seems, to me, to be emblematic of New York City in many ways, and the incongruity of an individual man carrying a child while walking through the area caught my attention. To be honest, the two of them were a lucky stroke. I”m pretty certain that I had first noticed that scene and thought to photograph it as a sort of urban landscape, but that as I was framing my shots the man and child happened to walk into the scene.

In retrospect, there now seems to me to be something almost poignant in the image of the man cradling the small child in his arms as he walks past and through what appears to be a very run down urban landscape. (The truth is probably a bit less dramatic, as you can find bits and pieces of real estate that look like this in many parts of the city, from what I’ve seen.) I think that it also helps that we is caught in a bit of soft but directed light reflected into the scene from surrounding buildings. I find the details of the graffiti and related stuff on the walls to be interesting, too. Of course, to the extent that I “saw” these things at the time, it had to be largely an instinctive matter, since there is rarely enough time to carefully consider all of these things when on the street and when the subject is walking into and out of the frame!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: street

Wall, Man Walking

Friday Night, Manhattan

DUMBO Afternoon

Walking Man With Child

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