Category Archives: Photographs: Death Valley

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Basin and Range

April 12, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A long distance view across Death Valley and to distant mountains beyond

The landscape of Death Valley National Park is immense. The fact that it is the largest national park in the lower 48 states begins to penetrate my awareness the more time I spend there. A number of years ago I spent some time on a very long cycling trip in Alaska and the Yukon, and this desert landscape comes closer than any other I have experienced to evoking the same sense of huge distances and deep stillness and quiet. This landscape extends even further beyond the boundaries of the park, from the Sierra Nevada to the west to distant peaks of the basin and range country to the east.

This high elevation location opens to such a huge swath of terrain that it is difficult to get your mind around the scale of what you are seeing. For example, there is a road out there in the large valley. To get there from the place where my tripod was set up would take me hours of driving — and that would take me perhaps less than half way toward the most distant peaks. Enhancing the other-worldly quality of this morning was the unusual atmosphere. The clouds of a weather front were breaking up over the mountains and valleys, and their shadows were moving across the landscape. Meanwhile, in another valley far behind me, dust storm conditions (which would envelope this entire scene by the end of the day) were beginning to pick up, and already the atmosphere was getting that milky, hazy quality that precedes such weather. At the bottom of the scene is an immense gravel fan that has carried material down from these mountains, filling the valley in places to thousands of feet of depth.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Abstract, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dunes, Sky

April 11, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sand dunes, shadows, and morning clouds

Another photograph from another morning among the dunes. Because of the daily wind and dust storms during this visit to Death Valley National Park, we had many opportunities to find sand dunes with no or few signs of other visitors besides those creatures that actually live there. We approached the dunes in a variety of ways during this visit, and I photographed them almost daily, sometimes more than one. But I always came at them from a direction that wasn’t the most popular or best known. This time I came around on a looping route from a side and swing around behind some low, sandy areas to photograph in early morning light.

There is a lot to see in the dunes, and I had a few ideas as we arrived at the edge of the dunes. (While I usually don’t begin with a specific photograph it mind, I often have some general conceptual ideas I want to explore, and I keep my eyes open for subjects that could work along those lines.) I started with some old dry playa textures in front of the valley floor leading of toward distant mountains as the sun rose, and then I climbed some short dunes to look for interesting curving shapes and conjunctions of lines and subjects. I photographed some creosote plants against sand patterns and eventually moved deeper into the dunes, seeing the rippling textures of wind-blown sand draped across hills and valleys. I stopped to photograph a bit of sand texture straight on, and when I looked up and to the side I saw this series of curving horizontal lines with the cloudy sky above and beyond.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Clouds at Dawn, Death Valley

April 10, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn storm clouds gather above Death Valley and desert mountain canyons

From this high spot there is a true 360 degree panorama — east over Death Valley, stretching far to the north and south with more mountains beyond, south and north along the spine of the Panamint Range, and behind across mountains and valleys and eventually a few peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Many times when I have been here the conditions have been at least mildly challenging, often with wind and sometimes cold, and on at least one occasion snow. This morning was relatively benign with temperatures well above freezing and winds that didn’t start to truly howl until perhaps an hour after our arrival. The quieter conditions made the contrast between deep silence and immense landscape even more striking.

There was a brief burst of sunrise light when we arrived, but it quickly faded as thicker clouds from an incoming weather front blocked the light. But the clouds were moving and as the morning progressed they began to open up a bit. At the moment of this photograph the clouds still blocked the sunlight, but a narrow band of color remained above the far mountains and brighter skies were appearing through breaks in the clouds. Below a large wash snaked down the bottom of the huge canyon toward the playa of Death Valley far below.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Salt Flats, Evening Shadows

April 9, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The evening shadows of mountains and clouds stretch across patterned salt flats.

The stark landscape of the desert is visually unique. Because there is little or no plant life (and what there is typically is sparse and small), the bare earth itself is revealed. Patterns of rock and soil and even water that would be hidden in a forested landscape are out in the open. In many cases there is little or nothing to provide a sense of visual scale — objects could be the size of baseballs or small cars and there is no way to tell. The landscape is often so large that haze and light play tricks, and cloud shadows play across the relatively plain playas and hills. Because the native colors are often subtle, any color from light (blue from shadows and warm tones in early and late light) can have a more profound effect.

Late on this day we visited the sunny side of this section of Death Valley, ascending the ramp of an immense gravel fan at the base of a canyon. The hills on this side of the valley were interesting, but looking back and across the valley very interesting patterns began to emerge. The far hills were already in the blue shadows of the oncoming evening, and the shadows of clouds raced across the nearer portions of the playa, which are here laced with their own patterns of flow channels and dried salt. Altogether these elements produced a landscape that seems more like an abstraction than a reality.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Death Valley

Basin and Range

Dunes, Sky

Clouds at Dawn, Death Valley

Salt Flats, Evening Shadows

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.