Recently I went through my archives to see just how many photographs of dried mud I have made over the years. It is a lot! There are perhaps a few dozen finished photographs of this subject that I have shared publicly. But there are scores of them sitting in my unprocessed raw file archives. This one, in fact, is one that I “discovered” during this search, and I’m now sharing it for the first time.
In a way it hardly matters exactly where the photograph was made. It was in Capitol Reef National Park, but it could have been just about anywhere in sandstone country where mud-laden water collects, dries, contracts, and breaks into fractal pieces. The way this process plays out is surprisingly varied. In this case, look closely and you’ll see that there are many layers — a Half-dozen or more in some cases — that have built up.
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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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