Tag Archives: travel

Salzburg Castle, Bavarian Alps, Sky

June 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking towards the Bavarian Alps from the Salzburg Castle

I’ll admit that this photograph has one of the more unusual compositions among my photographs. Late in the afternoon on a summer day, I made the photograph from within an upper courtyard of the Salzburg Castle during our visit to that part of the world a couple of years ago. We were actually staying in Bavaria, in the portion of the distant mountains that is in Germany, but we arrived by train in Salzburg, departed the same way, and managed to travel down to the flatlands and visit the city on a couple of other occasions.

The castle is a spectacular place, located on the high ground above the old town and a bend in the river and having a commanding view of the surrounding flatlands and all the way to the mountains. As impressive as it is to us today, it must have been far more impressive when it was built. From this vantage point I was just able to see over one of the upper walls toward the mountains, and the backlit, hazy sky glowed. I suppose that the photograph is all about shapes, mostly abundant rectangles, but also the triangular shapes of the roof of the white building. The mountains echo those shapes, but inverting the tones — where the white buildings are the lightest things in their part of the image, the mountains are the darkest things in the upper rectangle holding the distant landscape.

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

Photographs: Austria

Lamp, Narrow Street

May 31, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Urban/Street

Narrow Street, Heidelberg

May 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People stroll past a restaurant along a narrow street of Altstadt-Heidelberg

Here is another photograph from our 2013 visit to Heidelberg, Germany. (And London, and Bavaria, and Salzburg. Can we go back, now?) We stayed within walking distance of the altstadt section of Heidelberg, the old town area along the Neckar River and near the castle, and we walked over by way of the Philosophen Weg many times, hiking up and over a small hill between where we stayed and this popular area.

Being in the old town, it is no surprise that the streets are very narrow here. In most of this section of the town there are no cars, and people walk everywhere — except for the many folks on bicycles — and restaurants spill out onto the streets.

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

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature

Alps, Berechtesgaden National Park

May 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Alps, Berchtesgaden National Park — A trail passes through the Bavarian Alps of Berchtesgaden National Park, Germany

A trail passes through the Bavarian Alps of Berchtesgaden National Park, Germany

This was a special day on our three-week 2013 trip to England, Germany and a bit of Austria. Most of the trip, not surprisingly, was a rather urban experience. (I like those, too!) Particularly in London, the least urbanized part of the experience were brief visits to urban parks. Heidelberg perhaps had a less intensely urban feeling, though it still is very definitely a town/city environment for the most part. When we got off the train in Salzburg we were most certainly in another urbanized place, and even the beautiful area where we stayed in a Bavarian farmhouse was quite civilized — a town was a short distance away and we could walk to bakeries and even a restaurant. From the yard of the farmhouse we could look up to the alpine heights of the Watzmann, a truly alpine peak and the second highest in Germany, but it was something to look towards rather than a place to be.

This day started in a similar civilized manner: a drive to a large parking lot, purchasing tickets, and then getting on the Jennerbahn tram. The tram ride was, of course, spectacular as it took us up to a mountaintop lodge. But when we stepped out of that lodge and onto a system of trails that took us across a high ridge with views of spectacular alpine terrain and then dropped us into the top of a long high valley, this Sierra Nevada guy felt the familiar pull of mountains.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

Salzburg Castle, Bavarian Alps, Sky

Lamp, Narrow Street

Narrow Street, Heidelberg

Alps, Berechtesgaden National Park

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