Tag Archives: green

Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Kosovo, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Travel

Kosovo Forest

Image September 8, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dense forest scene in Kosovo woods near the White Drin waterfall.

Although much of our 2023 summer travel was to relatively popular areas of Southern Europe, we had the good fortune to break able to venture off that track a bit. A highlight was four days in Kosovo, a place I probably would not have thought to visit — except that someone in the extended family was brought up there and has family living in the country. So during the final two weeks of our trip, a time devoted to getting together with relatives, we spent four days in Kosovo, staying in the home of our family member, who took us to a bunch of fascinating places that we otherwise wouldn’t have known about. This photograph comes from one such place, along the river leading to the “White Drin Waterfall.”

I did not have many opportunities to do landscape photography on this trip — we mostly visited cities, I was carrying equipment intended for street and travel photography, and I couldn’t impose on my traveling partners in the ways that landscape photographers usually do. But I did have a few opportunities, including this one. Behind me was a very busy trail, crowded with people walking to the waterfall and the “Sleeping Beauty Cave.” But I pointed the camera the other way and photographed the lovely, soft light in this dense forest.

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: Nature, Photographs: Travel

Mosque, Valbone River Valley, Albania

Image September 4, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A mosque in sunlight under cloudy skies in the Valbone River Valley, Albania.

We stayed in Kosovo (with the family of a member of our “European family”) for a few days this summer during our extended travels in Southern Europe. After visiting the more typical destinations for American tourists, this was more of a cultural “stretch” for us, and a very rewarding one it was. There is much to say about the experience that I will share elsewhere at some point, but on this day we went into the nearby mountains of Albania, driving to a point where the road ended along the Valbone River — a spectacular area that easily rivals my Sierra Nevada landscapes.

Along the way to this destination I saw this rural mosque sitting in this beautiful valley as we passed by, and I made a mental note to try to stop and photograph it on the way back down later in the afternoon. I managed to persuade the rest of our party to stop and give me some time to explore and photograph here, and I was not disappointed.