Tag Archives: walk

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man In White Pants

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Man In White Pants
A man walks into the sun on a San Francisco sidewalk

Man In White Pants. San Francisco, California. September 5, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man walks into the sun on a San Francisco sidewalk

After more than a month filled with colorful photographs of autumn foliage in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, I’m going to cleanse my palate a bit… with a black and white street photograph. I know it seems odd and even inexplicable to some that someone who photographs the natural world and likes to spend time there would also be attracted to photographing the constructed world of urban streets — but I do. In some ways I think of this other universe as more of an extension of the same way of seeing that attracts me to natural landscapes. These are simply urban landscapes and they are populated by people rather than animals. The same light falls on the city and on the mountains. In addition, photographing street tunes up my visual sense, forcing me to quickly see and respond to compositions, light, and subjects.

On a couple of occasions this past summer I joined a small group of like-minded photographers to wander around parts of San Francisco making photographs at night. We generally assembled in the late afternoon, photographed first in the daylight late in the day, grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed back out into the evening to photograph street scenes under ambient and artificial light. Here I headed up a street into the late afternoon light, focusing initially on the backlit subjects and the lengthening shadows, and then this fellow walked into the scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Children in Striped Hoodies

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Children in Striped Hoodies
Two children in striped hoodies walk along a San Francisco street at night

Children in Striped Hoodies. San Francisco, California. July 25, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two children in striped hoodies walk along a San Francisco street at night

This is yet another photograph that I don’t actually recall making! Sometimes when shooting street I think I work so quickly and spontaneously that I simple capture an image and move on to the next one without imbedding the specific experience in my memory. This almost certainly was one of those very quickly made photographs, and I only made two exposures of these subjects before moving on to something else.

There is a lot in this photograph, some of which I was likely considering in the moment when I made the photograph and some of which may have been more or less a happy accident. I’m pretty certain that I was attracted to the fact that the two kids were both wearing hoodies with horizontal stripes — perhaps someone’s mother or father had just gone shopping for the two of them? A wonderful bonus was the child on the right (big sister?) putting her arm gently on the shoulder of the other child — her younger brother? Then there are the other bits of color — the blue form on the left (which houses an automated carnival-like figure) and the wildly painted lamp-post on the right. And, yes, there is something a bit disconcerting about seeing two young children alone on the nighttime streets of a big city — at least to this photographer who brought up three such young children.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Urban/Street

Narrow Street, Heidelberg

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Narrow Street, Heidelberg
People stroll past a restaurant along a narrow street of Altstadt-Heidelberg

Narrow Street, Heidelberg. Heidelberg, Germany. July 10, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People stroll past a restaurant along a narrow street of Altstadt-Heidelberg

Here is another photograph from our 2013 visit to Heidelberg, Germany. (And London, and Bavaria, and Salzburg. Can we go back, now?) We stayed within walking distance of the altstadt section of Heidelberg, the old town area along the Neckar River and near the castle, and we walked over by way of the Philosophen Weg many times, hiking up and over a small hill between where we stayed and this popular area.

Being in the old town, it is no surprise that the streets are very narrow here. In most of this section of the town there are no cars, and people walk everywhere — except for the many folks on bicycles — and restaurants spill out onto the streets.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Silver Sandals

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

Silver Sandals. London, England. July 8, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.