Tag Archives: sun

Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Nature

Cliff-Edge Forest Above Werfen

September 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees and grassy meadow at the edge of a cliff above the town of Werfen, Austria

For looking to be such an astonishingly exposed location, this spot was actually quite easy to get to. Sorry if I disappoint anyone! ;-) Above the town of Werfen, Austria, not far from Salzburg, is a feature known as the Eisriesenwelt Ice Cave. It is a well-known and popular tourist destination, and since our “guides” (family members who live in Germany) suggested it, we went and joined the other tourists. Although this post isn’t really about the ice cave, I’ll at least mention that it is quite a spectacular thing to visit. The cave itself is quite something, but so is the process of getting to it. The cave is located very high up the face of a cliff above the Salzach River valley, in a place that you would hardly imagine would be accessible by normal folks. However, a combination of hiking, taking a ski-lift style tram, and then hiking some more, this time on a well-constructed trail across the face of the cliff, brings you to the entrance to the cave.

After we finished our tour of the cave we emerged into the sunlight to see that it was clouding up. As we hiked down to the upper tram station we began to hear some distant thunder. The moist atmosphere became thick, and although it was still mostly sunny in the valley below, many of the distant valleys and ridges were becoming partially obscured. At one point the trail followed the contour of a small gully and looped back away from the cliff edge, affording a view back across this bit of meadow and forest that ended abruptly at the edge of the void where the cliff dropped to the Salzach Valley below.

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: England

London Sunset

August 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunset over London, England

We had walked across to the south side of the Thames River earlier on this afternoon – I think it was the day that we visited the Tate Museum, which is located near the south end of the Millennium Bridge. We had been in this area earlier on the trip when we saw “A Midsummer Nights Dream” at the Old Globe Theater, and I had wanted to come back in the evening and try to time it so that I could be along the river during the golden hour and perhaps into the early evening. Sure enough, when we were ready to start out walk back across the bridge to where we would catch the Underground back to our hotel the light was just starting to get interesting. In this case, “interesting” included not only the normal golden hour light show but also the somewhat thick and humid atmosphere found here.

My main thoughts were to photograph the skyline to the north and south of the bridge, and to continue shooting as the evening lights began to come on. But when I saw this sun in the hazy sky I put on a long lens that did what I would do in the Sierra Nevada back home – I made a sunset photograph! However, the landscape in this image is distinctly British and distinctly London, with the most obvious feature being the BT Tower at the left.

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature

Alpine Valley, Bavaria

July 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Sun dappled alpine scenery in the Bavarian Alps above Königssee, Germany

We have been traveling. After a week in London, we spent two weeks in Germany, one of which was in the Königssee area of Bavaria, Germany, where we stayed in an old farm-house. I’ll have more to say about this trip as I post more photographs over the coming days and weeks, both landscape and distinctly urban photographs. But for now, something from the Bavarian Alps.

As some of you know, I’m a long-time “Sierra Nevada guy,” who is very accustomed to hiking long distances in somewhat undeveloped areas in order to do photography. The landscape here is no less spectacular, but the experience is in many ways quite different. Take this day’s hike for example… It began with a ride on the Jennerbahn (ski lift) up to a point high up in the mountains, with scenery that reminded me in some ways of parts of “my” Sierra, but even more of some places I have visited in the Pacific Northwest. From there we hiked downhill for a kilometers, first across the top of a high ridge and then dropping down into a beautiful alpine Valley – complete with the Mahlerian sound of a chorus of cowbells. Halfway down we stopped for (fellow Sierrans, eat your heart out!) a lunch of bier und käsebrot before continuing on down to where we began at the base of the lift. The light in this part of Bavaria, at least during our visit, was very different from the clarity that I often seen in the Sierra – here the atmosphere was often thick with moisture, creating a soft quality. On this day, this was enhanced to a gradual build-up of thunderclouds that led to a spectacular evening lightning show, which we enjoyed outdoors at a picnic table back at our lodgings.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sierra Lupine, Spring

July 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense patch of Sierra Nevada lupine, backlit by spring morning sun.

In spring the lupine flowers can bloom profusely in open areas in the Sierra foothills. We passed this small field of lupines along a roadside on the way to Yosemite Valley – and the stop probably made us late for a bit of wonderful early morning light in the Valley. But sometimes it is more important to photograph what you see here and now than to race past on the way to what you might find later. (That bit of advice is not worth as much as it might seem since sometimes precisely the opposite ends up being the right choice!)

These flowers were growing in a burned area, so there was plenty of sunlight to encourage their strong growth and large lupine plants grew thickly here. Them morning light was still low enough – and somewhat muted by a bit of high cloudiness, if I recall correctly, so that I could get down low and shoot with the flowers backlit. In order to make some sense out of the confusion of colorful flowers and plants, I decided to use a longer focal length lens and a relatively large aperture so that I could isolate the foreground flowers against the blurred background of plants that were farther away.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sun

Cliff-Edge Forest Above Werfen

London Sunset

Alpine Valley, Bavaria

Sierra Lupine, Spring

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