Category Archives: Photographs: Desert

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Golden Desert-Snapdragon

July 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Desert-Snapdragon plant emerges from rocky terrain, Death Valley National Park

This is another photograph from a Death Valley trip I made back in 2010, “rediscovered” while going through old raw files near the end of 2012. The photograph was made along the roadside near a popular, even iconic, Death Valley location early one morning, during a spring that followed a much wetter than usual winter. During my visit I managed to catch the beginning of the impressive blooming of wildflowers that almost invariably follows such weather, as the desert plants take full advantage of the moisture and do everything in their power to reproduce. During the course of my visit, which lasted less than a week, I watch bare hillsides transition into flower-covered hillsides, and it seemed that some new plant was growing in almost every place that a plant might grow.

This plant is, obviously, quite small. You might have overlooked it and some of the nearby plants if you did not slow down and look a bit more closely. I only noticed the new plants after stopping on the other side of the road and looking around a bit. Once I did so, I saw a lot of wildflower color in this otherwise barren and rock place. This is on the verge of being a “belly flower” – one so small and so close to the ground that you must get down on your belly to photograph it!

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Brown-eyed Evening Primrose

July 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brown-eyed Evening Primrose flowers and buds, Death Valley National Park

Going through some older Death Valley photographs near the end of 2012, I came across a few photographs of small desert flowers including this one of (what I’m pretty certain is) Brown-eyed Evening Primrose. (I’m certain it is a primrose, and it seems to fit the description of the specific form.) I’m not sure why this and a few related photographs had sort of disappeared into the raw file collection, though every time I go back through the old original files I find something interesting that I missed the first time around.

Even though it has now been several years, I recall quite specifically making this and the other similar photographs. I had driven to a well-known Death Valley location – one of the “icons” – quite early in the morning, and as I looked around near that subject, I saw some color on a small, rocky hill just off the highway. I decided to investigate, so I walked over there with my gear and wandered up onto the small hill. (I suspect that anyone who had seem me poking around over there might have wanted to yell, “Hey, you, the photograph is over this way!”) It had rained recently and what I found was a fairly astonishing number of new wildflowers that were just beginning to come to life in this seemingly barren and rocky area. I ended up photographing a number of different types of flowers and even surprises such as a big green caterpillar!

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Automobile Graveyard

July 6, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of old automobiles abandoned and left to decay in a gully at an old desert mining site

I have passed this old mining site quite a few times, looked up at it, and kept going. On this morning I had a bit of extra time so I decided to pause and poke around a bit. Certain obvious signs of the presence of an old mine are clear from nearby, but a bit more exploration revealed a more extensive than expected site – as is often the case. Although an old gravel road headed into the area, I decided to first walk up the road, partly to avoid nasty surprises while driving and partly so that I would see a bit more – which is typically what happens when I’m on foot rather than inside my vehicle.

The gravel road twisted up a small gully and soon reached an area that revealed views of quite a bit more mining evidence than I had suspected. I’m certain that if I had continued to explore that I would have found even more, but I’ll save that for another visit. I often have this feeling that these sites should be much older than they really are, and I’m still somewhat surprised to find that some of them were electrified. The surprise at this location was the number of not-really-that-old vehicles that had been abandoned. They are decades old, but I’m guessing that they might date to roughly the WWII era or even a bit later which, in the grand historic scheme, isn’t all that long ago. Several of these vehicles had been abandoned, somewhat oddly, in the bottom of a wash that must flood at least occasionally, considering the amount of gravel that swamped their undersides. The back of this one was open, so I positioned my tripod just outside the car and shot through it toward the other abandoned vehicles. (If you find and explore such places, please be extremely careful to leave things as they are. The effects of our individual disruptions are cumulative and accelerate the destruction and eventual disappearance of these sites.)

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned Buildings, Leadfield

June 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Abandoned buildings at the site of the Leadfield mines, Death Valley National Park

In a way there is really nothing that special about Leadfield. It is one of many, many abandoned outposts and mining sites found all over California and, for that matter, all over the West. These sites remain, though precariously in some cases, as a reminder of a number of things: history that is not all that distant, the people who must have been willing to come to such places and attempt to scratch out a living by mining, the human capacities for misleading others and for falling victim to those who would mislead, and the temporal nature of things that might seem permanent at the time.

I’m no historian, but I can share a few facts about this particular spot. In the 1920s the town – with some semi-permanent buildings and reportedly many tents – came into existence and died again in the span of less than a single year. Although the reports of ore in the area and situation that might allow it to be successfully mined were wild exaggerations or downright lies, a road was built into this rugged area, work was started on a mill, and today there is still plenty of evidence of mines all around the area. I made this photograph from the tailings pile at the entrance to what I think may be the main mine shaft, looking out over the site in what I imagine might be the direction that a person working that mine might have looked. I wonder it these people took as much notice as I did of the tiny and inconsequential appearance of the human landscape against the vast and rugged natural landscape beyond?

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Desert

Golden Desert-Snapdragon

Brown-eyed Evening Primrose

Desert Automobile Graveyard

Abandoned Buildings, Leadfield

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