Category Archives: Photographs: Travel

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Travel

Bavarian Alps at Königssee

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Bavarian Alps at Königssee
Alpine ridges and peaks above the Königssee, Bavaria.

Bavarian Alps at Königssee. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Alpine ridges and peaks above the Königssee, Bavaria.

Today’s photograph ties together several threads — mountain landscapes, travel, and my continuing pandemic survey and reevaluation of older photographic files. This photograph comes from a wonderful trip we took almost a decade ago. Among other things, we all rented a big “farm house” near this location for a week — with a backyard view of the Watzmann massif, the highest peak wholly within Germany. (If I’m correct, the face on the right in this photograph leads up toward that summit.)

We did the tourist thing on this day, taking the electric boats up the Königssee lake to St. Bartholomä, from which we did the hike to the Eiskapelle at the base of a mountain face where fallen snow and ice collects. The photograph is from the boat. Every mountain range seems to have a personality of its own, and here (at least while we were there) the very steep faces, the forest along the lower slopes, the large meadows, the soft light and haze, and the non-granitic rock (which gets the attention of this Sierra guy) seemed to define this range.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg

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Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg
Interior of the Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg, Germany.

Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Interior of the Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg, Germany.

Continuing my pandemic “virtual travels” via my old raw file archives, I’m now out of London and in Heidelberg, Germany. This town is a sort of home base for us when we travel to Europe, mainly because we have relatives who live there. We love visiting (and traveling beyond Heidelberg with) them, and on longer travels we have used Heidelberg as a place to decompress for a few days. In other words, we’re fond of the place! This photograph is the interior of the Heiliggeistkirche in the altstadt section of the town.

This photograph illustrates something I learned years ago when photographing another subject that also makes impressive use of soaring, vertical space — the redwood forests of California. My early instinct with those forests was to almost always shoot in vertical “portrait” mode to try to get everything in frame. Eventually I learned that the implication of absent height can speak as loudly as its inclusion, and I began to photograph the trees in horizontal “landscape” orientation, and sometimes even very wide panoramic views. I think that the same principle is at work here, and the fact that the vertical structures extend beyond the frame may invite the viewer to consider just how tall the space is.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: England, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

At Nelson’s Column

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At Nelson's Column
People near Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square, London

At Nelson’s Column. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People near Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square, London

Everyone has to go to Trafalgar Square when visiting London, right? AT least if it is your first visit, which this was for us. I have previously shared a rather different version of this photograph — one rendered in monochrome and in a 4:3 aspect ratio. While looking through old photographs recently as part of my pandemic project, I came across it once again and saw it in a different way.

I now think that the colors in the image are appealing — I originally felt they were irrelevant. I find some interesting patterns and relationships among them. I also discovered that, for me anyway, there are a lot of interesting little things going on among the people in this photograph. While I don’t think it is a photograph that works primarily on the basis of its larger patterns (though there are some of those), I do think that it is the sort that becomes more interesting when I take the time to study it carefully. (I know. That’s kind of hard to do in a little social media jpg. A big print would work better for that.)

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: England, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Summer Twilight, River Thames

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Summer Twilight, River Thames
“Summer Twilight, River Thames” — The twilight sky above the River Thames on a summer evening in London.

This photograph comes from the end of a memorable day in London back in 2013. Believe it or not, this was our first visit to that city. We made the best of it, staying there for about a week before departing for other destinations. Various relatives from the US and Europe also showed up while we were there, and it was on this day, if my memory is correct, that the whole gang had finally arrived and met up. We had just had dinner together and were now along the Thames watching the day come to an end.

This photograph brings up the subject of how to interpret scenes photographed in very low light. It was the beginning of summer twilight on this July evening — there was still light and color in the sky, but artificial light was becoming more visible as in became darker. My tendency is to interpret light in ways that bring more of it to the subject, but with night and near-night photography it is easy to go so far that you lose the sense of a dark environment. In this photograph I decided to keep things relatively dark, at least compared to what I could have done, in the hope that the effect would be close to how we would perceive the scene in person.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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