Tag Archives: urban

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Storefronts, Reflections

September 19, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sidewalk shops and window reflections, San Francisco

Near the end of May I did one of my San Francisco walking street photography trips, heading up to The City on the train and then following a large loop through downtown San Francisco. San Francisco is a great walking city, and I’m able to cover a lot of ground and see a lot of diverse urban landscape on these walks — from the waterfront to business districts to industrial areas.

I saw a lot of interesting and possibly unexpected things in this little street side vignette. Oddly, there are no people in the photograph — more typically I line up an urban landscape like this one and then wait for subject to enter the frame. The colors, of the structures and of the shadow light, caught my attention — primarily we’re looking at the greenish awnings and the intense reds found in several places, with everything subject to the blue light of the shadows. And, of course, for this photographer it was frosting on the cake to be able to include the words on the awning in this photograph.

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

September 13, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

Walking Man and Brick Building

September 12, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man walks past a brick building in Brooklyn, New York

Near the start of our recent long travels we stayed several days in Brooklyn, visiting that area and others around Manhattan. We stated in an area not far from the Brooklyn waterfront, near the end of one of the bridges crossing the East River. Due to scheduling reasons, we were only able to wander this neighborhood a little bit at first, but later we did find some time to explore a bit.

Just north of our location — roughly Williamsburg — was an area with restaurants and shops, where we figured out we would have been luck looking for coffee and meals, since right around our lodgings there wasn’t much. My recollection — slightly vague now six weeks later — is that I made this photograph while walking in this area. I think I remember seeing this squared-looking red (painted) brick building first, and then waiting for someone to walk through the scene.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Street Scene, Manhattan

August 16, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking up a narrow street in the West Village

I like old photographs of cities, and especially of big cities like New York. For obvious reasons they tend to be in black and white. Once I started photographing these same subjects and making some of the photographs black and white, I began to notice that things in such places often look far more like they had in the past and that the supposed modern nature of such scenes is not at all obvious when abstracted by the camera.

I made this photograph from an elevated position along the High Line Park path that runs along a portion of the western side of Manhattan. In order to spot much here that is unique to the current time, I have to look closely — the overall impression is almost timeless. Yes, the vehicles are modern (at least for now), there are some traffic barriers in the distance that are a fairly new presence, and a very close look reveals somewhat modern attire on a few of the pedestrians.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: urban

Storefronts, Reflections

Woman on Balcony

Walking Man and Brick Building

Street Scene, Manhattan

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