Sunrise Above the Badlands. © Copyright 2022.G Dan Mitchell.
Sunrise on desert peaks works its toward badlands.
There are some landscapes that stump me. Even after returning many times, often over a period of years, I still find it hard to “see” them photographically. While I don’t generally have that issue with Death Valley National Park as a whole, there are a few locations where this comes up, and at least a couple of them are relatively iconic places that are visited by the majority of the park’s visitors. My feeling about both of them has long been… interesting places, but not my thing photographically. In the back of my mind, in both cases, I wonder if it is more that I still need to just figure out how to see them.
A chance comment that a friend made about one of these two locations recently stuck in my mind and I kept thinking about it on my January visit to the park. On the last morning of this trip I went to one of these place and poked around a bit. Perhaps surprisingly, this photograph includes a feature of the landscape where I have stopped in the past, looked, and kept going. This time, however, I went ahead and set up and then made a few photographs as the early morning sun was striking the high peaks to the east.
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.
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In fact, every scene like this is a sort of giant sundial. And photographers — this one, at least — literally do consider the different shadows that appear over the course of the year.
If you were there every day you could almost measure time by the shadows! Very beautiful