Morning Clouds Above the Manifold, Zabriskie Point. Death Valley National Park, California. April 2, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Morning clouds fill the sky above the Manifold at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.
I posted a monochrome version of this photograph yesterday, so there is perhaps a bit less to say about it in this post. To recap briefly, this is a photograph I made over three years ago during a spring visit to Death Valley NPS. This was a bit of a different morning for photographing at Zabriskie Point, if I recall correctly. Usually, photographing here is pretty straightforward – and once you’ve shot it a couple times in “normal” conditions, there is a basic pattern to the progression of light that becomes fairly (though perhaps not totally) clear. Normal conditions here basically mean perfectly clear skies with the sun coming up to the left from the perspective of this photograph or behind in some of the other familiar shots that include Manley Beacon – and light that sequentially illuminates subjects beginning with the highest peaks of the Panamint Range across the Valley and gradually working down into the Valley and finally to the rugged shapes at Zabriskie Point itself.
But clouds can change everything. If I am going to shoot at Zabriskie, I watch for conditions that will bring them. I will generally not stop there if it is “another beautiful clear sunrise” at Zabriskie. (If you haven’t been there before, you should stop and take in this stunning scene, but I’m often looking for something a bit different.) While the results in clear conditions are relatively predictable, they are not at all as predictable when there are clouds. You can end up with something very special… or with a drab, flat, and gray scene. But that’s the thing about special conditions – they wouldn’t be special if they were predictable and frequent!
Thinking back to this morning, my recollection is that it may have been one of those when I arrived to think, “Oh, boy, clouds!” – only to think a bit later, “I wish those clouds would move and give me some light!” I recall some bits of dawn light that were mostly blocked by the clouds. But the very clouds that blocked the hoped-for first dawn light thoughtfully assembled themselves into these impressive forms just a bit later, at right about the time that the warm side-light was getting down into the rugged folds of the Manifold and Gower Wash.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
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My wife really likes to go out and visit these places with me, once. Going back again and again she just isn’t to interested…I have to admit she is a real trooper dealing with me as a photographer.
That is crazy! I was just out there for the night hoping that morning would bring great sunrise pictures at the race track. Again another place I have visited many times with no clouds or sky colors…
It’s hard to convince the wife to drive that bumpy road again and again…
Ha! I wouldn’t think of taking my wife out there! :-)
Fog? At Devils Golf Course!? Wow…
I have a Teakettle Junction story. Quite a few years ago I travelled to DeVa in the early spring with a large group of middle and high school students. I wasn’t in charge, but I was assisting a science teacher who took kids on similar adventures every year for three decades. The plan was to backpack from the area up above Teakettle down to the Valley near Stovepipe Wells. There is a decent and well-known route, so it was a reasonable goal for this crew.
Because we had only one (very large) support vehicle and trailer, at times we had to do a combination of hiking and vehicle ferrying to get the group situated for stuff like the start of this hike. We began walking the road to Teakettle from Ubehebe Crater, though most of us fanned out into the desert and headed straight up the canyon. The vehicle ferried supplies ahead first and then came back and started picking up the slowest hikers, eventually doing enough round trips to get everyone to Teakettle, where we set up that nights’s camp.
It was freezing! It did not snow on our location, but it most certainly was snowing in the surrounding mountains. We had to deal with potential hypothermia among a couple of the students. (We knew how to deal with this and there were no problems once we understood the conditions.) Then the wind came up. It was the wildest wind I recall experiencing in a tent – and I’ve spent a lot of time in tents! Several of the larger tents blew down during the night. The pattern of the wind was unlike anything I had experienced before. It would be completely calm. Then we would hear a roaring sound somewhere down the canyon, and a moment later a wall of wind would blast into the campsite for a moment, before again subsiding to stillness. The process repeated for hours.
I recall in the morning, when it was merely freezing cold and no longer dangerously windy, that one of the other adults quietly asked if anyone else had actually felt the earth shake as the gust hit… and we all agreed that we had.
We bailed out of the pack trip and took everyone back down to the main Valley where we cooked up an interesting alternative trip.
Dan
I know what you mean about finding really weird conditions there. On one trip we were near the devils golf course and found ourselves surrounded by fog or mist that didn’t allow visibility more than 10 feet.
I to have been around teakettle junction when I thought I would freeze to death. It was so much colder than I was mentally prepared to deal with!
I would love to be there just after a rain storm some time…maybe next spring will be the time!
Chris, sometimes I think I must draw clouds to the places I visit! While I have been to Zabriskie in cloudless conditions on a couple occasions, more often there have been clouds – either the morning clouds that sometimes come with a passing cold front or the afternoon buildup over the Panamints.
My experience in DeVa seems to have been a bit odd in other ways, too. I’ve been through pouring rain while camped at Furnace Creek, experienced (very light) snow flurries at Scotty’s Castle, and encountered almost arctic conditions in the Teakettle Junction area. (And, of course, I have experienced the obligatory dust storms… but any repeat visitor to DeVa can probably tell that story.)
Dan
Dan.
Nice collection of clouds on this one. I honestly have been out to Death Valley many times living in Las Vegas and have yet to get to Zabrinskie Point when there are clouds.
So it is good to see that clouds do form there on occasion!
Nice composition and shot!
Good eye on this one! I really like the way the clouds mimic the foreground.
Thanks, Ben. Sometimes we just have to be in the right place at the right time with eyes wide open!
Dan