Tag Archives: urban

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

Brick Wall, Balcony Shadows

February 12, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shadows from metal balconies slant across brick wall

I don’t think I can up with a comprehensive list of all of the variations on urban and street subjects, but there are a lot of them. You can, of course, focus on photographing people — whether street portraits, with our without the subject’s cooperation, or anything up to groups and crowds. You can treat the urban environment as its own sort of landscape, looking for form and color and light in the familiar ways. You can think of it as a way of simply making a record of transitory things that will soon be changed or bone. It can focus on architecture. And the list goes on.

I think of this as a sort of street landscape. This New York wall, at this time of day and during this season, transforms into something that I can’t imagine the builders understood when they constructed it. My bet is that they were making a practical brick wall, with practical windows, a simple pair of balconies (probably designed to save money), and fire escapes. But, as was apparent when I walked past in December, becomes a canvas for a wild conjunction of shapes and textures and shadows.

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

Pedestrians, Lexington Avenue

February 8, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pedestrians cast shadows as they walk past reflecting windows on a Lexington Avenue sidewalk, Manhattan

I think that so-called street photography (which might be termed “urban landscape” photography) can do many things. Some try to constrain it, offering limiting definitions that call for monochrome, handheld cameras, photographs featuring people, and a certain direct approach to dystopian unpleasantness. While it can be that, it can be other things, too. The focus can be the light, the geometry, the individual and collective people, oddities, visual beauty, the constructed environment, and much, much more. And (despite this example!) there is nothing requiring it to be black and white and look like it was created with the photographic technologies of any particular era.

In this case, my thoughts were mostly about shapes and light when I made this photograph. (That doesn’t mean that we aren’t free to make other associations.) On this date, close to the winter solstice, the light shines obliquely up streets like this one in Manhattan, and because this section of Lexington is relatively wide and in an area with few really tall buildings, quite a bit of that light finds its way down to the street and sidewalk. As I walked into this light, I was looking for certain effects that are mostly found in such urban environments, especially the multi-directional light produced when the direct sunlight combines with light reflected from buildings and windows.

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

Photographs: San Francisco

South Beach Harbor, Morning

February 3, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on South Beach Harbor and buildings of downtown San Francisco

On this late-January morning I was up — you know the drill… “hours before dawn” — to catch a train up the Peninsula to San Francisco for a morning of street photographer and a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where an extensive show of Walker Evans photography was nearing the end of its run. (At some point I should write a bit about my response to the show. A quick summary: great show, some brilliant work, some work I identify with personally, some work that makes me wonder why it is on the wall.) For these trips I’m usually up around 4:00 AM, giving me a half hour for coffee and a quick breakfast before I walk to catch a bus to the train station, where I catch one of the “baby bullet” express trains that has me in San Francisco an hour later.

The weather was in flux, and when by the time I arrived it was clear that a dome of solid high clouds was over San Francisco. However, as I left the train just before sunrise I was able to see some light on the underside of the clouds that was apparently coming from a gap in the cloud cover across the Bay to the east. I quickly headed over to the nearest shoreline location and ended up at the South Beach Harbor. I found some unusual light here as the sun rise. The light was coming through a narrow gap between the western edge of the cloud shield and the low, East Bay hills. Meanwhile, the clouds over and to the north of San Francisco kept the sky there somewhat dark. As the light hit the shoreline area where I had gone, the foreground boats and buildings and so forth were lit by this lovely filtered light and set off against that darker sky. The conditions did not last long — soon the sun rose above that cloud gap and the light soon became gray and flat.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Museum Lobby

January 30, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Visitors milling about in the lobby of SFMOMA

It has been a while, and I was more than due for one of my periodic walking days in San Francisco. As per the usual plan, I was out the front door of our house long before dawn, to the train station by bus, and then by train to San Francisco, arriving just before sunrise. There were clouds over the City to my north and west, so I headed to the edge of the Bay, where the skies were clear to the east and early sun shone through on the shoreline and the City. I photographed along the waterfront for a while, and eventually wanted past the Ferry Building and up into the City north of Market Street.

I had a plan to circle back to SFMoMA by late morning, since the expansive Walker Evans show ends there in about a week. I arrived and took a break from my own photograph to view his and that of his contemporaries. (To anyone in the SF Bay Area who likes this sort of thing, go now! There is a ton of work in this show, and it ends a few days into February.) Evans evokes a mixed response for me. I share an interest in some of the subjects that interested him, including certain kinds of shops and other urban structures. His photographs of common tools are exquisite, and the WPA photographs of sharecroppers are really great. Other work impresses me less, and some of the photographs of objects and buildings (though not all of the latter!) impress me at times as being snapshots. But still, there’s a lot of great work in the show, and Evans had a big influence on the ways that many of us see. Once I completed my time in the Evans exhibit, it was time to leave and head back to the train station. But before I left I made a few photographs inside the museum, where I saw for the first time the patters of these lights reflecting on the floor in many places.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: urban

Brick Wall, Balcony Shadows

Pedestrians, Lexington Avenue

South Beach Harbor, Morning

Museum Lobby

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