Category Archives: Photographs: Germany

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Krämergasse und Ingrimstrasse

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Krämergasse und Ingrimstrasse
Corner of Krämergasse and Ingrimstrasse, Heidelberg

Krämergasse und Ingrimstrasse. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Corner of Krämergasse and Ingrimstrasse, Heidelberg

I have walked this street in Heidelberg a few times during three visits in the past few years. Sometimes it is filled with people (and bicycles), but it was very quiet on this day when we used it partly as a way to bypass the busy main street, which was crowded with other visitors. On the corner at the left you can see the sign for a restaurant where we enjoyed a very fine meal on my birthday a few years ago.

There are several things that I like about this simple scene. The streets have a certain neatness and orderliness that seems northern European to me. Not all German cities that I’ve seen look like this — and even parts of Heidelberg don’t — but it is a “type” of street. The light was beautiful, too — coming across the tops of the buildings on the left side of the street, striking the faces of the buildings on the right, but softened a bit by thin clouds. And, at least to my eyes, those bicycles seem to be peeking out from behind the corners and they seem like the only things inhabiting this empty street.

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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: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Hostel 36

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Hostel 36
Window and entrance to Hostel 36, Heidelberg

Hostel 36. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Window and entrance to Hostel 36, Heidelberg

By now we have visited Heidelberg several times, spending a total of perhaps a couple of weeks there. We have relatives (Patty’s brother and sister-in-law) who live there, so we almost always include a visit when we are in that part of the world. By now we’ve wandered a bit around the city, especially the Altstadt area and its surroundings, but also on the other side of the hill that runs along the opposite of the Neckar.

The Altstadt is, of course, a bit of a tourist destination. It is an older area of the city, many of the streets are narrow enough that there is little or no vehicle traffic, it is filled with restaurants, hotels, and other things that attract visitors, with historic churches, a university, and a large castle in the hills above. I recall that the first visit took us right up one of those streets filled with shops and restaurants. We still go there, but we also wander away from the “main drag” and into some of the back streets. It was on one such walk that I spotted this scene, a hostel with an unusual color exterior color scheme.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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

Time To Dance

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Street art in Berlin, Germany

Time To Dance. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Street art in Berlin, Germany

I made this photograph in Berlin, not too far from the “East Side Gallery,” which is a still-standing remnant of the Berlin Wall that was turned over to artists and which is now covered by paintings. The scene in this photograph is not part of the “gallery,” but was instead a graffiti covered wall we passed on the way to the wall. I don’t make a habit of photographing graffiti, often because I don’t want to contribute the notoriety of some folks who vandalize public and private property. But here the stuff is everywhere and seems to have become a part of the environment, so I’m making an exception.

Besides the wild colors and patterns of this street art, there was another reason for photographing it. While I don’t know “her” cultural significance, the figure in the center of the scene keeps showing up in photographs of mine. I encountered and photographed her twice on a visit to Paris two years ago. In one photograph she appears on a wall, partially obscured by ivy. In another, one of my favorite photographs, she is one of several related figures pasted onto a Le Marais wall behind a small group of pedestrians. Oddly, some of the surrounding “stuff” on this wall seems very similar to that in the Paris photographs, making me think that he appearance may not be quite random.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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: People, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Wall

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Red Wall
A person walks in front of a painted section of the Berlin Wall

Red Wall. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A person walks in front of a painted section of the Berlin Wall

Before I say much about this photograph, a bit of background. Near the start of August 2018 we departed from California’s West Coast on a trip that would last forty days. We started with a brief visit to New York City, followed by another brief visit to London — both great places to visit and to adapt more slowly to the time zone changes. From there we made a rough loop that took us to Amsterdam, Berlin, Nuremberg (briefly!), Bayreuth (site of the famous Wagner festival), Heidelberg (for rest and recuperation… and laundry!), Vienna, Paris, and then a week outside of Paris near Barbizon with family. Whew! It was a great trip, with a few familiar places and some that were new to us. Along the way we had lots of opportunities to make photographs, and I’ll be starting to share some of them over the next few weeks and months.

We had three full days (four nights) in Berlin, a city that neither of us had visited before. We don’t travel with tour groups, so we were mostly on our own to explore, and most of our exploring was done on foot. On our last full day we headed east from where we were staying, eventually making our way to the “East Side Gallery.” This is a large section of the Berlin Wall that was not knocked down, but instead turned into a vast canvas for artists. My approach to photographing such a thing isn’t precisely to photograph the art itself, but instead to try to place it in its surroundings and/or photograph people interacting with it — which is the case with this man dressed in red who walked in front of this red section of the former “red” wall.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email

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