Tag Archives: altstadt

Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Die Alte Brücke, Heidelberg

Image February 9, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As I have written previously, Heidelberg is our “home away from home” when we travel to Europe. We almost always end up there for at least a few days, and on our late 2024 visit we used it as our home base for essentially three weeks. Patty’s brother and sister-in-law live there and graciously host us. So by now we are somewhat familiar with parts of the city, including the Altstadt (“old town”) area.

I made this simple little photograph as we walked through hills above the Neckar River on the Philosophenweg footpath. Although the weather felt like winter (at least to us Californians!), there were still colorful autumn leaves on many of the trees. “Die Alte Brücke” (the old bridge) is visible beyond the trees in the center of the frame, and after we descended from the hills we crossed it into the town.

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: Europe, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heidelberg Castle, Bridge, and Altstadt

Image January 10, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Heidelberg is almost always our “home base” when we travel to Europe, annd our trips frequently start with a visit to our relatives there. At this point we almost feel like we know the place, at least their neighborhood and the Altstadt area in the photograph. The “old town” area stretches along the Neckar river and includes several features visible in the photograph — the “old bridge” (or Alte Brücke) and the Heidelberg castle, among htem. I made the photograph from the Philosophenweg, or philosopher’s way, a footpath in the hills next to the river.

Our previous visits have been in the summer, when the weather in this part of Europe is pretty warm. This time, however, we went at the end of autumn and it was distinctly wintry! Temperatures hovered around freezing, it was cloudy virtually the entire time, and we even had brief snow!

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heidelberg Altstadt

Image February 28, 2021 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Altstadt Heidelberg and the Neckar River, from the Heidelberg Castle

Before I write about this photograph, a little story. I have been posting daily photographs for close to fifteen years straight now. (I need to dig into the archives and determine the exact date — there may be an anniversary coming up.) I do this partially as a matter of discipline related to my music background… where we refer to this as “practice.” Generating a continuous flow of photographs, even if not every one is a masterpiece, is more a matter of exposing this process of practice. But I almost missed today! I had several photograph ready to post, but just before dinner I realized that I had not yet posted one for today! Close call, but here it is.

I made this photograph from the Heidelberger Schloss (castle) nearly a decade ago on one of our several visits to this city. (We’ve come to think of Heidelberg as home base for Europe visits as we have relatives who live there.) The photograph looks out across the old town (Altstadt) of Heidelberg toward the Neckar River and the flatlands in the distance.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg

Image February 16, 2021 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.