Many shooters featured in this series are decidedly amateur, which describes Archie Ballantine. But only one pic needs to be good enough to be picked, and Day takers often are either interesting or evoke a […]
Tag: urban photography
Flickr a Day 233: ‘Squint Eyed At Casa Coffee’
There is raw energy—emotional charge—behind the street photography of Ryan Raz. His style is unmistakably intimate and brazen. Composition often hides, at first glance, something intriguing on closer examination.
Self-titled “Squint Eyed At Casa Coffee” is unremarkable on quick inspection. But there is something about the motion of life—the women in and outside the shop—and the subject’s all-but-closed eyes that is immediate and unpretentious.
Flickr a Day 231: ‘The Courage Wall’
First looking at the photostream of Dan Reed, I puzzled over the perspective and subjects, which are unlike anything else yet featured in this series. He shoots streets, buildings, and such from vantage points that are atypical. Then I read his bio. He’s an architect and city planner. Dan looks at things with a dramatically different eye than I would; he sees things in another context that is refreshing and revealing.
Dan shares his insights at blog “Just Up the Pike“, which refers to Maryland Route 29, or Columbia Pike. Our daughter was born when we lived off 29, just outside Silver Spring, which is Dan’s hometown.
Flickr a Day 226: ‘White Flint Mall’
My daughter grew up going to the enclosed shopping center in Kensington, Md, where we lived for nearly a decade. There once was a kid’s play place on the third floor that was affordable and fun. Gone. We bought manga books, calendars, and tasty treats from the Borders. Gone. Molly trick-or-treated store to store on Halloween. No more, kiddies. My wife and I bought our wedding rings in a jewelry store that also is gone. The 850,000 square-foot upscale consumer cathedral closed earlier this year. Demolition is underway, and a court case brought by Lord & Taylor against the center’s management went before a jury earlier this week. Our memories, and those of others, are all that remain.
I chose self-titled “White Flint Mall”, which Mike Kalasnik shot on June 30, 2012, for its timeliness to current events. He used iPhone 4s, and for the first time in this series I slightly cropped a photo (to remove yellow road lines). Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 64, 1/2404 sec, 4.3mm. Mike, who joined Flickr in July 2007, runs the “Dead and Dying Retail” website, which offers startling look at urban decay.
Flickr a Day 224: ‘Piercing’
Our selection is so odd, or my ability to process the elements so lame, only the photographer’s explanation can make sense of it. “I went to the Institute for Contemporary Art today”, Nicholas “Nic” McPhee says of self-titled “Piercing”, captured on June 30, 2105. “As we passed through the Boston Financial District on our way there, we stumbled across ‘As if it were already there‘ by Janet Echeman. This is a big, glorious public art sculpture installation in the sky above a park—the Rose Kennedy Greenway”.
The suspended structure went up in May and goes down in October. So don’t delay getting to Bean Town if you want to see it. “This is actually a brightly colored—if the light catches it correctly—net/mesh of high strength fibers and LEDs that actually lights up in quite brilliant color at night”, Nic says. “I highly recommend the wonderful pictures on her website, which include some cool night shots”.
Flickr a Day 223: ‘New York — The Long End’
Perspective takes the Day—a March 22, 2013 capture from the hands of Jacob Aurland. Self-titled “New York—The Long End” is a “vintage looking american school bus on New York, 5th Avenue, just infront of the Plaza Hotel […]
Flickr a Day 209: ‘Railway History Slowly Rotting Away’
Good urban photography is as much about the past as the present—or, better, intersection of the two. For that quality, self-titled “Railway History Slowly Rotting Away” takes the Day. Diego Torres Sylvester explains: “An old […]
Flickr a Day 208: ‘Glowing Mouth’
Street photographers present many different styles as a group but often something specifically identifiable individually. The art produced by Raul Lieberwirth is unremarkably human. I say unremarkably because the quality isn’t overbearing but just there. He captures the […]
Flickr a Day 205: ‘Planking on the Metro’
What better way to have fun underground in Washington, D.C. than, as the self-title describes, “Planking on the Metro”. Today’s selection is the second of three (see Day 204 for the first) of photos recalling […]
Flickr a Day 199:’Green Houseboat’
Vibrant colors make this pic our Saturday pick. Ian D. Keating shot self-titled “Green Houseboat”, which is “accessible from the pier. Fisherman’s Wharf. Victoria, BC. Canada”, using the Olympus E-PM1 and M Zuiko Digital 40-150mm F4.0-5.6 […]
Flickr a Day 172: ‘Abandoned Farmhouse’
Some selections are purely personal taste. They appeal to me, while not really reflecting the shooter’s broader photographic style. Thus, we come to self-titled “Abandoned Farmhouse”, which you can consider companion to yesterday’s “Fear of […]
Flickr a Day 171: ‘Fear of the Dark’
Our second of three photographers discovered by searching Flickr for “silence” returns us to an artform explored on Day 8: Abandoned structures. If not for the decay, the room looks ready to receive guests for […]