Tag Archives: bar

Bar Martinez 1942

Bar Martinez 1942
The evening crowd at Bar Martínez 1942 in Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain.

Bar Martinez 1942. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

The evening crowd at Bar Martínez 1942 in Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain.

In a sense, it felt like this summer’s big European adventure (ten weeks of travel!) really began in Donostia/San Sebastián Spain. Our arrival felt different from much of the rest of the trip, where mostly it was just the two of us, traveling light and sometimes a bit randomly. But several things were different at this first stop in Spain. We met a couple of “our (adult) kids” here. Within about an hour of our arrival, a stage of the Tour de France also arrived a short distance from where we stayed. And we did something else a bit unusual for us — we took a “pinxtos tour” on our first night.

If you don’t already know, pinxtos are essentially the tapas of this Basque region of Spain — wonderful, varied, “small plate” foods, and Donostia/San Sebastián is known for this culinary style. We usually plunge into such things on our own, but the “kids” had arranged for a tour with a local guide. She took us to a series of pinxtos bars, and it was a lot of fun. The photograph comes from the area of town where these businesses are found, and I snapped it as we wandered about in the evening.


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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Venice Restaurant, Evening

Evening Restaurant, Venice
Patrons sit outside at a Venice restaurant on a summer evening.

Venice Restaurant, Evening. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Patrons sit outside at a Venice restaurant on a summer evening.

When we visited Venice in August we stayed perhaps no more than a five-minute walk from this spot. Our little hotel was in a quiet corner without the tourist hubbub that characterizes the most popular areas of this city, but we were only a few minutes away from busier areas. As we walked to them we often passed through the square where this restaurant is located as we headed to a bridge across a canal. It was an interesting place, but until this evening I never quite saw how I wanted to photograph it.

We had been out late — I don’t recall the details now, but it probably involved looking for a place to eat late dinner. For some reason I was “in the zone” for night photography on this evening, and I carried my small camera as we walked, making spontaneous photographs along the way. We were headed back toward our hotel, and after we crossed that familiar bridge I spotted the table set up outside this restaurant, mostly illuminated by light spilling out from the indoor seating area, and I made a couple of quick exposures as we passed by.


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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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.

Bar Vittorio Emanuele

Bar Vittorio Emanuele
People gathering in Bologna on a warm summer evening

Bar Vittorio Emanuele. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People gathering in Bologna on a warm summer evening.

A few years back we drove from Heidelberg to Florence and then into the Tuscany hills where we stayed for more than a week. The drive took a few days, with the first night spent in Munich and the second in Bologna. (Florence wasn’t that much farther than Bologna, but we wanted to visit.) Our arrival was a very strange and even uncomfortable experience. We came into town in the evening, finding the area we were in mostly deserted. We eventually found a place to leave our car and set out to find our “hotel” rooms. That was a strange and complicated story that would take to long to describe here.

We finally got our rooms and decided to head out. It was now dark, there were no street lights in the area, walls were covered profusely with graffiti, it was hot (as expected), and there seemed to be no one else outside. We finally found an open restaurant, got a table, and ate at the nearly deserted place, wondering what we’d gotten into. Then, a bit after 9:30PM, we started to see people. Over the next hour the crowds increased in size and by 10:00PM or so there were lots of people out and about, eating, drinking, hanging out… and enjoying the cooler evening temperatures.


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 | FacebookEmail

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


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

Man With Ice Cream Bar

Man With Ice Cream Bar
A man eating an ice cream bar on a Manhattan night

Man With Ice Cream Bar. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man eating an ice cream bar on a Manhattan night.

As I continue revisiting some old raw file archives from nearly a decade ago, I’ve been going through some photographs from a weeklong visit to New York City. We were there partly for music-related activities, partly for family reasons, and partly to make photographs. A few years’ distance from the immediate experience lets me see the photographs a bit more objectively, I think, and I’ve found several that I think are worth sharing now.

For five or six years I’ve been doing a lot of handheld night street photography, but this photograph comes from before that period —actually from a single evening in Manhattan when I began photographing in twilight and just kept going. There are multiple ways to “read” this photograph. I think that one initial approach may be less than complimentary to the subject, but the more I think about it the more I see other perspectives that are positive. I’ll leave it to viewers to sort that out!


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 | FacebookEmail

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


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