Tag Archives: town

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Travel

Doorway, Steps, Morning Light

Image Leave a comment
Doorway, Steps, Morning Light
Morning light on a weathered doorway, steps, and a small plant — Orvieto, Italy.

Doorway, Steps, Morning Light. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Morning light on a weathered doorway, steps, and a small plant — Orvieto, Italy.

Since I wrote earlier about our stop in Orvieto, Italy I will keep the background brief on this post. Orvieto is a lovely “hill town” in Umbria. The old walled city occupies the relatively flat top of a hill surrounded by steep slopes. It is a popular day-trip destination, though we stayed there a few days and enjoyed evenings and mornings without crowds.

As a very old town, it is a cit of very narrow and winding streets. (The “small bus” ride to our lodgings from the funicular was… something.) The whole place is eminently walkable, and we took advantage of that throughout our visit, wandering to places that we knew we were supposed to visit (including the impressive duomo) and walking randomly up and down whatever streets looked interesting.

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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

Photographs: People In Landscape, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Travel

Bridgeport, Autumn Sky

Image Leave a comment
Bridgeport, Autumn Sky
Clouds from an autumn weather front build a above Bridgeport, California.

Bridgeport, Autumn Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from an autumn weather front build a above Bridgeport, California.

For those who aren’t from my part of the American West, it is probably important to state up front that this is “the other Bridgeport,” the one in the dry eastern part of California. The town is located in a broad valley at the base of the Sierra Nevada, more or less northeast of Yosemite National Park. The valley is full of cattle grazing in its extensive pasture lands that somehow escaped the clutches of the historic Los Angeles water rights grabs in the eastern Sierra. In addition to cattle, the places relies a lot on campers, anglers, backpackers and other visitors to the outdoors — though in a more laid-back, old-school manner of places a bit off the beaten track. Oh, it is also known for being (at least in my experience) one of the two or three most expensive places in the state to buy gas for your vehicle.

To those of us who live in far more urbanized areas — for me, that is the San Francisco Bay Area — places like this have a bit of an appealing raw edge, a sense that they are closer to the cycles of the natural world and, to some extent, dominated by them. On a day like this one, when the clouds of a Pacific weather front fill the sky, the town itself seems quite small in relationship to the landscape that surrounds it.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned, Rio Dell

Image Leave a comment
Abandoned, Rio Dell
An abandoned building in the twon of Rio Dell, California.

Abandoned, Rio Dell. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An abandoned building in the twon of Rio Dell, California.

On this last full day of our recent visit to the far Northern California coast we took a long drive through varied terrain out along a section of the so-called Lost Coast. While the mileage would have made for a one-hour urban drive on almost any California freeway (at least if it weren’t rush hour), the nature and condition of the roadway, along with the need to stop to look and make photographs, turned this into a full-day affair.

This is a very different California than what we see in the Bay Area, Southern California, or even the Central Valley for that matter. Most of the area is quite rural, and the effects of over a year of pandemic isolation are clear in small communities with many closed businesses. (Though a new business, one based on certain formerly-illegal agricultural products, seems to be thriving in some of the backwoods areas.) We came back to US 101, the main through-route, near here and decided to stop of coffee in the small town of Rio Dell. As we left town this building caught my eye. I’m guessing that it was originally a gas station before being turned into something else and then more or less abandoned. But what a paint job!

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Mendocino Bay, Morning

Image Leave a comment
Mendocino Bay, Morning
Waves wash onto the shoreline of Mendocino Bay on a foggy morning.

Mendocino Bay, Morning. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Waves wash onto the shoreline of Mendocino Bay on a foggy morning.

Recently I returned to the photographs from this visit to the North Coast of California, on which we spent a few days in Mendocino. This little town presents an interesting dichotomy between the old-school funky, hippiness of that part of the state and the semi-yuppified element that has grown in more recent years. In a sense, you “see it all” in this place.

On this visit we stayed in town, not more than a couple of minutes walk from the bluffs overlooking the bay just south of the peninsula on which the town sits. On this morning we wandered over there in the morning before the morning fog and haze had completely clearer, and I made a series of photographs looking inland along these bluffs to the outlet of the river that drains into the bay.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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