Tag Archives: wall

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Window, Shutters, Bicycle

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Window, Shutters, Bicycle
Heidelberg street scene with bicycle, window, and colorful reflections, shutter, and door.

Window, Shutters, Bicycle. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Heidelberg street scene with bicycle, window, and colorful reflections, shutter, and door.

This is another little scene we found on a walk along back streets of Heidelberg Altstadt. The main street is very busy, and lined with businesses appealing to the many tourists who go there. You can find some of that stuff on the other streets but much less of it, and there are fun little vignettes that seem a bit (humor me here!) less contrived… and you certainly don’t see the chain businesses that are part of the busier areas.

It was also a bit easier to photograph here since there the crowds of people are largely missing. So we walked these streets slowly, with two goals — making a few photographs and finding a place for lunch! Both had successful outcomes. This window, combined with the green shutter, the blue door, and the red/orange reflected wall produced a striking color pattern. Oh, and a bit later we located a little restaurant that wasn’t too busy where we ordered a beers and food.

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.

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Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Travel

Art

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Art
A wall covered with art postcards in a museum gift shop, Vienna

Art. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wall covered with art postcards in a museum gift shop, Vienna

This summer marked our first visit to Vienna, a place that we thought we knew a lot about — largely from our background in music — but which surprised us in many ways. We arrived by train, and on the taxi ride to our hotel I was stunned by the monumental architecture of many of the buildings and the layout of the city. During our stay we got to know parts of the city much better, mostly by walking from place to place.

And, of course, we visited museums. I made this photograph in one of them, as we passed through a gift shop. Something about this “rack of great art,” reduced to postcard size and juxtaposing a wild array of work, caught my attention. I think you can enjoy it simply as a wildly colorful thing, or as a place to look for unintentional connections and relationships. You could also test yourself by seeing how much work you can identify. You could also muse about the way that great work is transformed into postcards and what it all means!

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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.
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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Doorway, Heidelberg

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Doorway, Heidelberg
A graffiti-covered doorway on a narrow Heidelberg street

Doorway, Heidelberg. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A graffiti-covered doorway on a narrow Heidelberg street

To the extent that a photograph can be “about” things — I tend to think that a photograph “is” a thing — this one is perhaps about my obsession with geometries, about light, and about the door, with its graffiti, and what that might tell us about the door and how people here treat this “street art.” And by “about” I don’t necessarily mean that it tells us about these things — more that it may be about questions raised by such things.

The doorway is on a back street in the old part of Heidelberg, where we wandered on an August day earlier this year. These colors and this sort of paint and decoration seem fairly characteristic of this area. As we walked, the left side of the street was in shadow and the right was struck obliquely by sunlight that was somewhat softened by hazy cloudiness. Without that filtering the light would likely have been almost to stark for the photograph. Here I notice, as I did with an earlier photograph from Amsterdam, that there seem to be some “rules” constraining the application of the graffiti. It is on the door but not, for the most part, on the walls. Oddly, it all seems to be in black or other very dark colors. (I actually wonder if it was created by the people who live/work in this building.)

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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

Photographs: Netherlands, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Unfun

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Unfun
Weathered wall with graffiti, Amsterdam

Unfun. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered wall with graffiti, Amsterdam

For the most part I don’t photograph graffiti, and on the rare occasions when I do in the US I may alter the painted “tags” in post in order to avoid giving publicity to folks who, it may be argued, are basically vandalizing the property of others. I’m also sometimes a bit uneasy, when the marks transcend mere graffiti and become street art, about simply capturing an image of someone else’s art and presenting it as my own.

But sometimes I can’t help myself. In fact, on our 2018 European travels we encountered so much graffiti that it would almost be dishonest to pretend that it isn’t part of the urban landscape. (Especially in Berlin. Very much especially in Berlin…) This little example comes from Amsterdam, and I appreciated several things about it. I was intrigued to see that it was mostly constrained to the blocks or rectangular material on the right side of the frame and mostly not on the bricks — almost as if these were somewhat well-mannered graffiti artists. The juxtaposition of shapes and colors interested me in its own right. And then there is that enigmatic “UNFUN” inscription in a somewhat neat sans-serif font, contrasting with the other colorful scrawls on this wall.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 | Facebook | Email

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