Tag Archives: monochrome

Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Spain, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Outdoor Plumbing, Madrid

Image January 28, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Near the end of our visit to Madrid we went for a long walk, One goal was El Rastro, where there is a long-standing street market every Sunday. Our walk was pleasant, passing through interesting neighborhoods and past historical sites. But this particular sight caught me off guard. You might imagine this is a sign of a run down neighborhood, but that isn’t my recollection. But there was this one odd little corner featuring a small toilet/outhouse with the door wide open. So I had to photograph it, right?

I can imagine that at least a few of you who follow my landscape photography might wonder if I’ve lost the thread here. However, I think that just about anything has potential as a photograph, sometimes even things that aren’t exactly pretty. Sometimes a difficult image can be beautiful, though I’m necessarily making that claim here. Other times it can reveal something about a subject or even tell a story. And such a photograph might just leave you asking some questions — which isn’t a bad thing.

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: Spain, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Narrow Street with Automobile

Image January 6, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This is a narrow street in Montpellier, France. Like so many European cities and towns, with their long histories, the central area is filled with these tiny, curving lanes. They were most definitely not designed with automobiles in mind — more likely pedestrians and perhaps an occasional horse-drawn wagon. Since the building are built right to the edge of the street, there is no way to widen the lanes — so cars are very small and access is quite limited.

If you are American, you might think this would be a bad thing. We are used to cities built around and/or adapted to the automobile. Even older cities, like those on the Eastern Seaboard, have been adapted to have many wider avenues and lots of parking — not necessarily “enough” parking, but still. The folks who live in these European cities seem to do OK, though. Vehicles can get in when necessary, but much of the time pedestrians take over these streets.

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Burned Pines, Mono Basin

Image December 27, 2024 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Burned Ponderosa Pines, Mono Basin — “Burned Pines, Mono Basin” — Burned trees near the end of a giant pine forest, Mono Basin.

This desolate scene is along the fringes of Mono Basin, the large valley holding Mono Lake. It is just east of the Sierra Nevada, but it is a very “un-Sierra-like” place, being dry sagebrush country for the most part. The photograph looks past a sparse forest of dead snags and in the direction of Mono Lake itself.

There is a vast pine forest near here, stretching over nearby mountains toward Mono Lake. Most of it appears to be quite healthy, and it features open forest with space between the trees and lots of light. However, at some point in the past a wildfire swept through part of it and left behind many dead trees, including these that used to make the very edge of the forest.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sky

Mono Craters, Evening Cloudscape

Image November 20, 2024 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I made this photograph at the end of a beautiful afternoon of aspen photography that was enhanced by the passage of impressive thunder storms. I had completed the day’s aspen photography and dropped back down into the high desert along US 395 in the Mono Lake area when the clouds began to thin and break up and glow in evening light. Here some lenticular clouds were forming over the Mono Craters.

The Mono Craters comprise an interesting bit of geology that we might not automatically associate with the Sierra Nevada. We tend to think of the range being built by the uplift of gigantic “blobs” of granite, with deeply eroded overlaying material above. But volcanic processes were at work out here, too. Mono Craters are a particularly obvious example that you cannot miss as you drive south from Mono Lake — and part of a chain of volcanic cones extending from the north short of the lake to south of Mammoth Mountain.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: monochrome

Outdoor Plumbing, Madrid

Narrow Street with Automobile

Burned Pines, Mono Basin

Mono Craters, Evening Cloudscape

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.