Tag Archives: scenic

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon

Leave a comment
Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon
A large cottonwood tree with fall colors in front of sandstone walls and a side canyon

Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon. Grand Staircase—Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 25, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A large cottonwood tree with fall colors in front of sandstone walls and a side canyon

During a bit of hard drive housekeeping this week I found a folder full of files from a Utah visit in 2012. Because I have a hard drive that is about to fill, I’ve been looking for unused and unneeded files that invariably get left behind after work on various projects — you know, the files that I “just might want to keep around, just in case.” I think that the batch in this folder were transferred from my laptop, and they are most likely files that I worked on quickly in the field and planned to update on my desktop computer later. My first thought was that I’d just delete the folder, but then I looked more closely and found several files that I want to keep.

This is one of the keepers. Although I hadn’t thought if it for quite a while, I now recall this little canyon junction quite distinctly, a place were a smaller side canyon dropped down into the larger canyon through which we walked. Scale is hard to judge against this landscape, but the old cottonwood is very large, especially for one in the base of a narrow canyon. This photograph reminds me of something else, too — I need to get back to these canyons!

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 | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Austria

Lamp, Narrow Street

Leave a comment
Lamp, Narrow Street
A lamp, old buildings, and a narrow street, Salzburg, Austria

Lamp, Narrow Street. Salzburg, Austria. July 17, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lamp, old buildings, and a narrow street, Salzburg, Austria

With this photograph I’m back to that theme of the lamps on the walls of Salzburg, Austria. As I mentioned in an earlier post, once I noticed them I began to see them everywhere, always attached to the exterior walls of buildings and always with the same lamp shape, the same curving stem, and the same two bars to brace it.

This one is actually in part of the Salzburg castle, if I recall correctly. It was getting to be late in the afternoon and the angle of the sun was becoming lower, creating more shadows with their blue-toned light. In the photograph one wall is still lit but the sun, and the foreground wall picks up a bit of the reflected glow of sunlight on a wall behind my camera position. Given that the place was busy with tourists, I had to be patient and wait for a moment when the scene was clear.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Austria

Salzburg, Bavarian Alps

Leave a comment
Salzburg, Bavarian Alps
Countryside around Salzburg, Austria and the Bavarian Alps, as seen from the Hohensalzburg castle.

Salzburg, Bavarian Alps. Salzburg, Austria. July 17, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Countryside around Salzburg, Austria and the Bavarian Alps, as seen from the Hohensalzburg castle.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, while we did not actually stay in Salzburg during our 2013 trip to London, Germany, and a tiny bit of Austria, were there on several days during our week near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. We arrived in Salzburg by train from Heidelberg, and we left from Salzburg on the return journey. In between we made additional visit to Salzburg and the surrounding area.

On this visit we decided to walk up to and into the Salzburg Castle, sitting high above the old city. The castle is worth the visit for many reasons, but if you keep climbing… and climbing… and climbing you can eventually reach the highest accessible point, from which you have huge panoramic views in all directions. Behind me was the city itself, and stretching off in this direction was an alternative patchwork of buildings and fields and trees that appeared to reach all the way to the base of the Alps in the far distance.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature

Bavarian Alps, Berchtesgaden National Park

Leave a comment
Bavarian Alps, Berchtesgaden National Park
The Bavarian Alps rise above Königsee in Berchtesgaden National Park, Germany

Bavarian Alps, Berchtesgaden National Park. Königsee, Bavaria, Germany. July 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Bavarian Alps rise above Königsee in Berchtesgaden National Park, Germany

Over the course of a summer week in 2013 we had a lot of opportunities to gaze at these Bavarian Alps. We spent a week with family in the Berchtesgaden area, staying in a big farm-house with views across a bucolic valley and into the mountains as they rose to the summit of the Watzmann, the second-highest peak in Germany. We did the “tourist thing” and rode the electric boats up the Königsee Lake between high ridges, and on one memorable day we visited Jennerbahn, took the tram to the top, and spent the rest of the day descending alpine valleys on foot — with a mid-hike stop for snacks and a beer!

During our stay I think I got a sense of how these mountains are different from my “home range” of the Sierra Nevada — though I would need a much longer stay and more hiking to get to know them well. Because they are built from different sorts of rock, the shapes of the peaks are often quite different. The tall rugged peaks also rise almost directly from relative lowlands — for example, a short hike took us from the lake to the base of a huge cliff at Die Eiskapelle, a place that felt thoroughly alpine. In the Sierra we have kept vast stretches of the range relatively wild, isolated from human structures to the point that one can imagine that he/she is in a fully wild place. In the alps there are huts, and you can stop for a beer in the middle of an afternoon hike! The ridges and valley in this photograph rise from the shoreline of the Königsee.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.