Death Valley, Morning Clouds. Death Valley National Park, California. March 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Morning sun shines through atmospheric haze and clouds above Death Valley
Death Valley is a very big place, and getting to locations sometimes requires a lot of driving. Photographing there often requires a very early wakeup call, and I’m often on my way to some location in the park well before first light. Leaving during darkness, often for a place very different from where I’m staying, means I have to make some educated (and not so educated) guesses about what conditions might be like many miles away and at sometimes very different elevations. As result, I often do not know precisely what conditions I’ll find when I arrive at an early morning location.
Such was the case on this morning. The destination was more than 6000′ feet higher than where we were staying and many miles away. In the past I’ve arrived at this spot to find very strong winds and very cold temperature. This time the temperature wasn’t so bad but we did have winds. Just before arrival at the final destination the sky lit up briefly, so we halted and photographed from that location before continuing on… and watching the light die as the sun rose. We consoled ourselves — we had caught a brief bit of good light and it was a beautiful spot to be in, photographs or not. Since we were there we went ahead and made a few photographs, and as we did so the conditions began to improve in somewhat dramatic fashion. The earliest hint of the afternoon’s upcoming dust storm appeared in the distant milky haze through which beams of light passed. Higher clouds began to collect, and dramatic light cut across the face of the arid mountains below us.
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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