Category Archives: Photographs: Desert

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

Flow Lines, Morning Light

April 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Soft early morning light illuminates curving erosion patterns of a desert gully, Death Valley National Park

Today I’m back from my annual spring photography visit to Death Valley National Park. I first visited this place a bit more than 15 years ago, though photography was not the purpose of that first trip. My first view of the Valley was magical. We had arrived the night before and set up camp in the dark at the first camping area we found, a tiny campground near below Towne Pass at the turnoff to Wildrose Canyon. I had little idea where I was nor what my surroundings looked like, as I had literally never been in this place before. Early the next morning I stepped out of my tent and was greeted by an astounding and unexpected view down into the huge and rugged landscape of this Valley, a first sight I will not forget.

Since then I have returned many times — much of that landscape has become familiar to me as I’ve pushed the boundaries of my knowledge of the place outwards in all directions. I’ve been into areas that I didn’t imagine existed on that first visit, and I’ve learned to see past the geology and geography of the place and see the human history of the park and the sometimes-hidden beauties of wildflowers and more. Today when I visit I still look for that astonishing and grand landscape, but I also slow down and stop and look for more subtle things that I surely missed nearly completely on that first visit. This little miniature landscape of curving erosion and stones and first light is one that I would have missed completely on that first visit, but which I now know can be found almost everywhere in this park once I slow down to the pace of the desert and take the time to really look.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Red And White Strata

March 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Returning from Utah last fall we decided to make a detour up toward Red Rock Canyon State Park. I’ve driven through/past this park many times while traveling to and from Death Valley National Park, and every time I’ve passed through I have promised myself to stop… eventually. Eventually continued for more than ten years, aside from a brief pause at a road side pullout, so it was about time to make a visit. The terrain is striking, not looking anything at all like other areas nearby. The fluted and eroded structures and occasional layers of red rock bring the Utah geology to mind, though in a considerably less intense form.

We only had a short time there since we had started our day back in Zion National Park. Arriving in the late afternoon we took what seems like the main driving loop in the main part of the park, and followed it back up to a campground which was almost completely deserted on this late-season date. We found these formations along the upper edge off the campground. At first the very soft light — from high clouds — and the subtle colors almost made me wonder if photographs would be worthwhile, but eventually I figured out how to “see” this light and the subdued colors.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Canyon Country Gulch, Evening

November 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light in a gulch among red rock hills.

I can credit a knee injury for this photograph. Several days earlier I had been photographing in a slot canyon far from this location. As often is the case, there was a lot of the typical thick, slimy mud in the bottom of the canyon, although the tracks of other visitors had created a drier and less slippery path around the worst of it. However, at one point my attention strayed from the path (as it almost always does when I’m looking for photographs!) and one foot missed the trail and landed in a bit of sloping mud. This mud may just be the most slippery surface on the planet, and my foot immediately slipped few feed toward the bottom of the mud and a pool before I managed to arrest the slide with my other leg — in the process putting way too much lateral stress on my knee. At the time it didn’t hurt much, but fast-forward to perhaps five days later and…

… as we headed down a gully to toward another big canyon the knee started to act up, and at a point where the rest of the group dropped down into the narrower portion of this canyon my knee said, “No.” I let the group go on, explored a bit in the flatlands above the canyon, walked out, and went elsewhere to photograph. In the evening I returned to camp before the rest of the group and I had some time to kill before sundown, so I wandered off from camp into some beautiful nearby red rock and spend an hour quietly photographing in the evening light, where I found this little gulch with a lone cottonwood tree at its far end.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sunrise, Capitol Reef

November 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn clouds about the peaks of Capitol Reef National Park

Finding sunrise light like this is a matter of getting up very early, making some decent pre-dawn guesses about what may happen later, finding a good location… and a whole bunch of plain dumb luck. Oh, and persistence helps, too — if you are out there a lot you will inevitably increase the odds that you’ll encounter the very special light. But no one can call up a small cloud centered above a ridge lit by first light that also turns the distant clouds shades of pink and purple.

Our primary plan on this day was to take a rather long drive down the east side of the park, though the ultimate goal was a bit fuzzy — it could have been a slot canyon I know of or it could have been a higher location that I had visited before. We started out in near darkness from our campsite, crossed the park, and then started south. As dawn approached, it was immediately obvious that the sky was just about to do something amazing, so we quickly found a spot with a panoramic view in most directions, stopped the car, grabbed cameras and tripods, and hurried to find compositions that might make use of this light. Since most of the interesting geological features seemed to be a good ways off, I put a very long lens on my camera and focused on small distant details. For a very brief moment, just as the first light began to gently wash over the high peaks of Capitol Reef, this intense color came to the clouds and one small cloud became visible against the lighter background.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Desert

Flow Lines, Morning Light

Red And White Strata

Canyon Country Gulch, Evening

Sunrise, Capitol Reef

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