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.
I’m going to try to keep this post somewhat brief, and touch on two aspects effects of this reality. There is, no doubt, much more to say about both ideas, but not in a “morning musings” post! So I’ll keep it to one paragraph per idea this time.
I believe that photographs are not so much about the things in front of the camera as they are about how the photographer sees the world. Whatever the subject might be, there is only one of it. Yet there are as many ways of seeing that one subject as there are people — perhaps even more. At first we all are certain that the subject of a photograph is that thing at which we point the camera, but the more photographs we see — our own and those of other photographers — the more we understand that the important thing is how and what the photographer sees, and how that way of seeing is shared photographically. In your own photography, this can and should eventually lead you beyond trying to emulate or compete with other photographers, and toward finding your own true and honest way of seeing.
Related to the idea that photographs embody your way of seeing is a secondary issue that affects the difference between how we see our work and how others see it. I sometimes am surprised that a photograph I believe in provokes little response from viewers, while one that I might think is fine-but-not-great will evoke a strong response. One explanation may be that no one else can ever see a photograph in the same way that the photographer sees it. I don’t write this to suggest that viewers are coming up short when they look at photographs. The point is actually more about a mystery that the photographer often has to deal with. We often “know” our photographs in ways that are inaccessible to others. We recall the experience of making the photograph, what we had in mind when we made it, how the subject might connect to us in a personal way. We understand what we wanted the photograph to be and to do, and we are aware of things that we might have chosen to do differently in retrospect But viewers know none of this and, for the most part, can never fully know it. One of the outcomes of this reality is that we, as photographers, are frequently not the best judges of our own work. For everyone in the world but the photographer, the photographs have to say what they say on a visual basis — whatever meaning and associations they may have must come from that visual object.
Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment. Connections to photography may be tenuous at times!
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Overlooking old Heidelberg, Germany and the Neckar River from the Philosophen Weg
This is another “postcard” photo of Heidelberg, from our July 2013 visit. (Which was part of a larger trip that included London, Bavaria, and a bit of Austria.) The scene overlooks the Neckar River as it flows past the old town section of Heidelberg, surrounded by forest and sitting below the historic castle.
Although it is a postcard view, those people are members of our extended family, many of whom joined us on this memorable trip. (You know who you are! :-) The little overlook is along a path known as the Philosophen Weg, or “philosophers way,” that follows along the side of a ridge that parallels the river above the bank opposite the old town. We stayed within a few minutes walk of the lower end of this route and we used parts of it to walk to the old town and back. On this morning, all of us climbed the hill and then followed the path beyond the area seen here, descended to a little place for brunch, and then headed back into the town.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Gated entryways and exterior walls, San Francisco.
As an Official Aficionado of Geometry, I found this more or less nondescript front of some San Francisco housing fascinating. The location is nothing special, being perhaps a few blocks up from the touristy Fishermans Wharf are and down an anonymous side street that I happened to turn onto for reasons that I can no longer recall. At street level, the walls are less walls than places to contain other things: gated entry-ways to apartments, garage doors, windows and so on. Little space is left empty.
The shapes include lots of vertical and horizontal lines and almost nothing (aside from the edges of the metal “thing” above the central gate and a bit of the concrete next to the garage door) that isn’t moving in one of those two directions. The central gate of rust colored metal dominates the scene. While I imagine that behind the gate is someone’s nice, comfortable home, the gate itself reminds me of something I might expect to see in a prison! To the left is another security gate, thought its bars are horizontal. There are a couple of surprising bits of color, too. The red at the bottom of the main gate, which I assume is there for the safety of people who might trip on that bit of a step, is matched by the bright red of the small extended window that is just barely intruding into the upper left corner of the frame.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
