Tag Archives: buildings

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: France, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pigeons on the Roof

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Pigeons on the Roof
Pigeons on the roof of the Brancusi Gallery at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris

Pigeons on the Roof. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pigeons on the roof of the Brancusi Gallery at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris

We were here somewhat early in the morning to visit the nearby Centre Pompidou. We may have arrived before it opened — or perhaps we weren’t aware that it had opened, or possibly we just wanted to look a bit before entering. In any case, we were walking around the large open space in front of the entrance, and I took the time to make a few photographs of the surroundings.

Off to the side, along a parallel street, is the Brancusi Gallery — the building whose roof is seen in the photograph. I think that the flock of pigeons first caught my attention. I thought it was odd that they were all clusters on the roof of this structure. Then I began to find the composition of lines and shapes and color interesting, with the slight foreground diagonal creating some dissonance with the squared shape of the gallery and with the older buildings in the background.

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: France, Photographs: People, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Woman and Clock

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Woman and Clock
A woman gazes through the portal of a Musee D’Orsay clock towards Paris

Woman and Clock. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman gazes toward the Paris skyline through the portal of a Musee D’Orsay clock

I can tell something of a story on us regarding the Musee d’Orsay. On a previous visit to Paris we were trying to get to various specific locations including a few museums. However, we can be a bit “seat of the pants” when it comes to wandering around in such cities — rather than making specific plans we tend to decide things on the spot and/or wander around and see what we find. We knew we wanted to visit this museum, but it wasn’t until later on that visit that we made it there. We paid our admission, went inside, and discovered that we had perhaps 90 minutes left before it closed. Needless to say, we moved very quickly through sections of the place and missed a ton of stuff.

This time we wanted to go back and spend a more reasonable amount of time there. And we did. We got there in time to see a good portion of the marvelous exhibits. At one point we were getting hungry, and we ran into a restaurant on one of the upper floors and decided to stop. Overlooking the restaurant was a clock like what you see here. I was very confused. I knew I had seen “the” clock briefly on the previous visit, but I didn’t recall a restaurant… so I chalked up to, “they must have remodeled things and installed this restaurant by the clock. ” We finished eating, went back to visiting the exhibits, and eventually worked our way to the far end of the floor… where we found the other clock, the one that I had seen before. Usually there are a ton of people standing in front of the thing — and who can blame them — but for a moment I was able to frame this photograph with a solitary woman standing and looking through the clock’s windows towards the skyline of Paris.

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: Netherlands, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Amsterdam Bike Lane

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Amsterdam Bike Lane
Cyclists on a bike lane on a cloudy day in Amsterdam

Amsterdam Bike Lane. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cyclists on a bike lane on a cloudy day in Amsterdam

This photograph is partly about bicycles and Amsterdam, partly about that interesting and dark sky, partly about Amsterdam architecture and buildings that lean, and partly about that guy in the foreground. This summer was our first visit to Amsterdam. We stayed just outside of the central city and walked a few blocks to get to the well-known areas each day. For many years I was a very active cyclist in the US, but this is an entirely different scene. Almost no lycra, dropped handlebars road bikes, few mountain bikes… and lots of people in street clothes riding very utilitarian bikes… and parking them everywhere. Somehow the intersecting types of traffic — foot, transit, canal, bicycle, car — seem to coexist here, though it can be quite confusing at times for a first-time visitor.

This day’s light was remarkable. There was thin sunlight, but there were also some lovely dark clouds in the sky. If memory serves, we were in light rain later that evening as we ate dinner outside. We ended up talking to a couple who live in Amsterdam about many things. I confessed that I had initially been mildly disappointed to find the cloudy weather when we arrived, expecting it to be sunny. They more or less laughed and pointed out that this was the more typical sort of conditions. (They claimed that I would not see blue sky. That turned out to be wrong… but only by a little bit!)

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 |
Email

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