Tag Archives: wall

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Yellow Wall, Hellbrunn Palace

January 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yellow walls, green shutters, and the ubiquitous metal street lamps, Hellbrunn Palace near Salzburg, Austria

Hellbrunn is the site of the famous water garden, including a variety of “trick” fountains. I had never heard of the place, but our family guides thought it would be a good place to visit, so there we went. It was a palace for a member of Austrian nobility at one point (there’s more to the story than that…), and the story goes that he enjoyed playing tricks on guests. As a result, the grounds feature not only the usual huge lawns, statues, manicured gardens and so forth, but also a lot of water, some used to create all sorts of tricks and oddities.

There are benches from which water may spray on the person sitting there, doorways to small buildings that can suddenly spray the visitor, water that sprays up from sidewalks, and animated scene powered by water, a water powered organ, and more. The buildings, which are quite extensive, also include more staid living quarters, places to entertain guests, and art collections. As we walked around, I noticed the same street lamps attached to the exterior walls that I had seen elsewhere in Salzburg, so I included an example in this photograph of the corner of a brightly painted building.

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

Brick Building, Doorway, Reflected Sky

December 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The desert sky is reflected in the windows of an abandoned brick building in the ghost town of Bodie, California

I have been to Bodie quite a few times, but I rarely go there anymore unless I think something interesting might happen with the weather. The place is often sun-blasted, with cloudless blue skies, and during the part of the year when it is most often visited it tends to be quite hot and dry. Don’t get me wrong – Bodie is a fascinating place and its story is even more interesting. I’ve visited a number of ghost towns and isolated abandoned structures in the outback of California, and the sheer scope of this ghost town sets it apart, as does that fact that California has worked to sustain it in a state of suspended decay.

We were wandering around the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and points further east of that on the final day of our five-day “aspen chasing” visit this October. Most often my plans are a bit general and/or flexible, and I like to adapt to changing conditions rather than stick to a preset shooting schedule. On this day we were surprised to find it snowing when we awoke in Mammoth Lakes, and as we left town to explore in an eastward direction we stopped to photograph dawn snow flurries over the Sierra crest. Eventually, after going a good distance out toward the Nevada border, we looped back to the north and ended up in Lee Vining, where we grabbed a (very late!) breakfast at Nicely’s. The possibility of going to Bodie was somewhere on the list of options, but when we continued to see snow falling about the town and clouds to the north and east, we decided to head out there to see what we could find. In the end, there was no snow falling in Bodie – though it had fallen there earlier that day – but it was very cold and very windy and broken clouds provided interesting and changeable light. One of my main subjects as I wandered around the town making photographs turned out to be the doors and windows on the old buildings. Perhaps ironically, given my usual lack of interest in sun-blasted Bodie, I shot this scene in nearly flat front light – but it seemed appropriate for this old and weathered building and the reflection i the old windows of the very blue cloud-filled sky.

Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Urban/Street

Salzburg Cafe

December 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People sit at an outdoor cafe on a sidewalk along a narrow street in Salzburg, Austria

This is sort of a photograph of nowhere in particular in Salzburg, Austria. A ways off from the busy downtown area around the touristy shops and other old buildings, things seem to quiet down a lot. There are few or no cars on many of this very narrow streets – barely wide enough for a single car anyway, and the tightly packed multistory buildings create a sort of canyon effect. There do not appear to be any gardens here, and every plant I recall seeing on most of these streets was growing in a pot. The buildings are not all the same color, but they do all seem to be pastel shades.

As we walked in this area we came to a t-intersection, with this little cafe occupying the middle of the upper bar of the “t.” I photographed it straight on from the other street on the intersection. I was fascinated by the almost complete lack of “branding” on this business – it was only by looking very closely at the photograph that I could make out a name for the place. The most obvious sign simply says “cafe & restaurant.” I was also interested to see that the seating, of which there must not be enough inside the building, not only spilled onto and across the narrow sidewalk, but extended right into the street, where its boundaries were defined by the large potted plants! A couple sits in the green chairs on the right with a very young child. They seem to perhaps be the grandparents – and grandpa is catching a smoke while grandma tends to the child. The colors in the seating area contrast with the pale, pastel colors of the buildings (and the matching umbrellas), and include a green that is brighter than that of the plants and lemon yellow back near where two men talk on the right.

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

Meadow, Trees, Granite Wall

November 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The immense granite face of Cathedral Rocks looms behind trees of El Capitan Meadow in autumn afternoon light

This meadow, located between two of the largest cliffs in Yosemite Valley, is both an obvious place to make photographs – everyone does it – and a place of nearly infinite variations of light, season, and atmosphere. Sometimes when I’m in the Valley I may stop here two or three times during the day. As is the case in other spots in Yosemite Valley, the place changes radically depending upon what the light is doing – soft early morning or evening light, strong light coming down the Valley in the early morning, light blocked by cliffs at midday, strong backlight in the late afternoon. And many of these changes happen very rapidly. As I made this photograph I could virtually watch the shadow move over the trees from the right.

The granite face rising beyond this meadow – one of the two I mentioned above – has always attracted me for some reason. Although not as high as the much more famous El Capitan, in some ways it seems to me to look more forbidding. It seems to lack the obvious crack systems seen on El Capitan, and unlike the larger wall, which is often bathed in sun, this one is often in shadow. In winter it casts a shadow across this portion of the Valley in the middle of the day, though a low spot may allow a beam of light to sweep across this area in the late afternoon.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wall

Yellow Wall, Hellbrunn Palace

Brick Building, Doorway, Reflected Sky

Salzburg Cafe

Meadow, Trees, Granite Wall

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