Tag Archives: walk

Photographs: Europe, Photographs: France, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Evening Stroll, Montmartre

June 3, 2018 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

People walking in the evening along narrow streets of Montmartre, Paris

This is another photograph from our 2016 European trip, on which we spent about a week in Paris. It was, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, our very first visit to the city. (It is a long story. But at least we did finally go. And we’ll go back again!) We loved everything about our stay there. When we travel to such places we spend a lot of time walking — to and from locations we want to visit, wandering around once we get there, and exploring neighborhoods near our accommodations or which happen to catch our attention.

I made this photograph “in the neighborhood” near our hotel in Montmartre. My recollection is that we had headed out looking for a place to eat dinner — something of a daily adventure — and were walking around during the sunset and evening hours. This is a great time for street photography, since the lights of businesses have come on, yet the ambient light from fading daylight is still bright enough to illuminate the scene.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: People In Landscape

Hiker, Desert Canyon, Natural Bridge

June 2, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A hiker passes under a natural bridge in a Death Valley National Park canyon

Timing seems to matter a lot when photographing and hiking in Death Valley. A whole range of factors come into play: distances between locations, times of day with best light, concerns about temperature, and so on. Over the years I have come up with the rough outlines of a daily schedule — which I frequently violate! — to adapt to the general patterns. I usually start the day with a pre-dawn and sunrise location, and then move to a second early to mid morning place. In many cases I take a midday break — when camping I use this to lounge around camp, eat, nap, or else to drive to more distant spots — Then there is often an afternoon location, followed by a sunset and early evening spot. The dawn and sunset angle is probably obvious to most readers, but what about the mid-morning and afternoon spots? These are often in canyons, which can be a bit too dark at the edges of the day, but which often get nice light a bit after sunrise and before sunset. Bonus benefit: they produce shade during hot parts of the day.

On this day we were using this plan, so we took a mid-morning hike up this narrow canyon, enjoying the opportunities to escape the direct sun and the beautiful light in the bottom of the canyon, as it bounced down from above and between the canyon walls. Here a hiker (my wife Patty) went ahead of me beneath this big natural bridge and headed on towards the mouth of the canyon not far beyond.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Strolling Couple

February 24, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A couple walks past a white-painted brick wall

This photograph is a bit more “in your face” than most of my street photography. I’m generally not one of those “stick the camera in someone’s face” sort of photographers, preferring to be a bit less invasive of people’s space. (However, I can’t deny that photographing people who did not go out into the urban environment intending to be my subjects is, almost by definition, always at least a little bit invasive and aggressive.)

I’m hard pressed now to recall even making the photograph, which means it was most likely made very quickly and probably while I was walking. I could not have predicted the woman’s remarkable yawn — or perhaps she is singing? ;-)

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Crosswalk, Upper East Side

January 1, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pedestrians in an Upper East Side crosswalk on a very cold winter day in Manhattan

Another freezing day in New York, another visit to a museum, another walk, and more photography. This time our plan was to visit the Guggenheim, on the Upper East Side along Central Park. Because we tend to stay on Pacific time when we go to New York — instead of my usual 5:30 wakeup time, I wake around 8:30 — we ended up stalling on various little tasks until nearly noon. Then we stopped for coffee, followed by a walk to a subway at our Lower Manhattan location, and then a subway ride up to a stop on Lexington to the east of the Guggenheim. We arrived to find that lots of other people apparently had the same idea — there was a long line snaking around the corner. We joined the line, in 20 degree temperatures, and then simultaneously noticed that the line wasn’t moving and that we were increasingly freezing. We gave up, and headed east to find a warm place to get something to eat.

After lunch — soup, of course! — we set out again, but with no particular goal in mind. We headed south on Lexington, with a plan starting to form that would take us over to and perhaps through part of Central Park before we picked up another subway train at the lower end of the park. As we walked down Lexington we were headed straight into the sun, and its headlong light made the atmosphere glow, bounced light off of building windows, and cast long shadows from the approaching pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk and crosswalk.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: walk

Evening Stroll, Montmartre

Hiker, Desert Canyon, Natural Bridge

Strolling Couple

Crosswalk, Upper East Side

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