Tag Archives: wall

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Street Light, Siena

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Streetlight, Siena
A wall-mounted streetlight bearring the colors of a Siena contrada.

Street Light, Siena. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wall-mounted streetlight bearring the colors of a Siena contrada.

A few years back during a weeks-long trip through portions of Europe, we stayed in Tuscany for about a week and a half. We drove down from Germany (where Patty’s brother lives), stopped briefly in Bologna, continued on to Florence, and then to a place in this hills between there and Siena where we stayed for about a week. (We concluded this visit with a few days in Florence before flying home.) One one of those days in the hills we drove to Siena and spent a good part of the day there.

Our visit to Siena was too short… but at least we had time to do a brief exploration and realize that it would be worth a return trip. The old section of the city is a wonderful maze of narrow, twisting streets that eventually lead to the famous central square. The city is divided into 22 districts, each of which is identified by an animal and, as I understand it, a color scheme. The colors appear everywhere, but I thought they were especially notable on the novel street lights like this one.

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: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Laundry, Siena

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Laundry, Siena
Laundry hangs outside a weathered yellow builiding in Siena, Italy

Laundry, Siena. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Laundry hangs outside a weathered yellow builiding in Siena, Italy.

The old part of Siena is remarkable. Yes, there are old cities and towns all over Italy, and they all have their charms. But my (too!) brief visit to Siena showed me a town that felt quite different. A maze of narrow and curving streets encircles the main piazza, it is easy to become lost here. But after negotiating the maze you can emerge at the remarkable Piazza del Campo, the large square where the famous horse races are held.

You don’t see all of that in this photograph, but you do see lots of little features that are common in this part of the world. The color of the building on the left is intense, but it is also common — many buildings are in a narrow color band between brown and yellow… and many are also rather weathered, like this one. The light is also typical of this area — intense and stark in the summer, especially in the midday.

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

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Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Woman On Bicycle, Street Musician

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Woman On Bicycle, Street Musician
“Woman On Bicycle, Street Musician” — A women on a bicycle stops to check her phone as a street musician rests against a brick wall, Florence, Italy

Yes, I seem to be in a retro frame of mind recently, what with a significant number of black and white images plus a thread of street photography. Every so often, I think, my roots in black and white photography seem to come back to the foreground. I began photography decades ago (how many decades I won’t say…) when my father took me — and my siblings — under his photographic wing. He started us with very basic cameras, and eventually we graduated to helping him in his home darkroom. Obviously, in those days, virtually everyone was workmen in black and white, so that’s were I started. My photography and that of the folks who caught my attention was entirely black and white. Eventually I moved to slide film, but that initial exposure to black and white stuck.

This is another of the photographs I made in Florence, Italy back in the summer of 2016. As often happens, I move on from a collection of photographs as other subjects catch my attention — so it is almost always profitable for me to return to the “abandoned” files later on, where I almost always discover images that I like. While Florence in the summer can be a very busy place, crowded with hordes of tourists, if you poke around in the right places at the right times you can find quieter scenes. And if you like soft, shaded light, you can often find that in abundance here, too.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: France, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Wall Warrior

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Wall Warrior
A weathered figure on a Paris wall.

Wall Warrior. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A weathered figure on a Paris wall.

Today I take a detour towards the whimsical, in the form of a figure found on a a wall in Le Marais, in Paris. It looks like an anime character to me, but I’m not super familiar with those “folks,” and a quick image search online didn’t come up with an identification for this one.

I saw quite a few of these examples of paper street art glued to walls in Paris and in other places in Europe. Oddly, I never saw a fresh and undamaged example — those that I saw ranged from mildly weathered to nearly gone. For me, part of their charm lies in the weathering away of the material.

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

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

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