Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

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

Canyon Wall in Reflected Light

December 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pink and blue canyon wall and plants in midday light reflected from a nearby cliff

This is the second photograph I made along this section of curiously colorful cliff face deep in the “narrows” of a Death Valley National Park canyon. I have visited this place a number of times – it isn’t all that hard to get to – and often found it to be a very challenging photographic subject. I have shot it before, but mostly made it work by including people in the frame or by shooting subjects above the canyon rather than at the bottom. Because it is so deep – and it lacks the beautiful reddish rock of the Southwest – the depths of the canyon are often simply dark and somewhat drab.

As I passed through this time I took a slower pace than sometime, and I’m sure I saw things that I had overlooked before. This was certainly the first time that I had noticed the pink tinge to the rocks in this spot, much less the subtle blue tones of the underlying layers, the interesting rippled patterns, and the glow of light from an opposite canyon wall. I almost kept going but something told me to slow down and spend a bit of time here looking around, and I finally decided to see what compositions I could make out of the cracked rock and very sparse plants.

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

Titus Canyon Narrows

December 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon road passes through the Narrows as light reflects down from canyon walls high above

Titus Canyon road is a well-known “attraction” in Death Valley National Park, traveling from the eastern park boundary in the Amargosa Valley near the town of Beatty, Nevada over the Grapevine Mountains and then down to Death Valley itself. It is also known as a fairly rough road, subject to washouts and closures after storms – not a true four-wheel-drive road, but certainly not for the faint of heart of those who are not accustomed to rough desert and mountain driving. (Many chose to forgo the long drive and instead hike into the canyon from its mouth, from which the spectacular “narrows” section is easily accessible.)

I have been getting to better know the country through which this road passes as I’ve driven it many times during the past decade or so. More recently I have been slowing down and taking nearly the full day to drive its length – and in doing so I am able to see and photograph things that I used to miss. Oddly, since it is often regarded as the main attraction of the route, I’ve often found it very difficult to photograph the narrows section near the end of the road just before it spills out at the top of a giant alluvial fan along the edge of Death Valley. Perhaps it is the predominantly gray color of the rocks – once you’ve photographed the canyons of the Southwest, California rock just looks so drab! This time I think I passed through the narrows section at what must have been just about the ideal time of day and season, and light hitting upper canyon walls was reflecting down into the bottom of the canyon and creating some interesting, albeit subtle, colors and soft reflections on the rocks.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Pre-Dawn Light, San Joaquin Valley

December 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pre-dawn light and thin fog above marshland in California’s San Joaquin Valley

A foggy fall landscape with birds from California’s San Joaquin Valley, where I often go at tho time of year to photograph migratory birds and the often foggy, cold, and damp places they live. The region is largely agricultural, with lots of cattle being raised nearby – but in the winter the pastures are flooded and a huge variety of birds can be found here, including geese, herons, white pelicans, cranes, ibises, egrets, and more.

As I usually do, I left the San Francisco Bay area very early in the morning, well before dawn, so that I could arrive here before the sun came up. I had already been shooting a while when I stopped next to this pond where a small group of coots (?) were clustered together. I had been looking for some sort of foreground focus around which to build a photograph that included those interesting clouds over in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, clouds that here are just beginning to pick up the dawn light that had yet to reach the valley, were there was still a light blanket of fog.

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

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

December 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A single bare tree stands against a massive sandstone cliff

This photograph had fallen by the wayside in the wake of a 2012 autumn photography trip to Utah with a group of friend. The three of us photographed mostly in various areas of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and also briefly hit Zion on the way to and from the main destinations. As happens all too frequently, after working my way through almost all the photographs from that trip other tasks intruded and I moved on. A week ago one of my shooting partners emailed me to ask if I had a photograph of him that he could use for a newsletter. I recalled that I had one of him set up next to a bit of sandstone wall along the Escalante River, and while looking for it I ended up going back through a set of RAW files shot that day.

Now, over a year later, my specific memory of this photograph is a bit fuzzy. I recall for sure that we spent the day – a cold and windy one – in a big canyon with steep sandstone walls and a meandering stream lined with cottonwood trees and other autumn vegetation, some of which had lost virtually all of its foliage. This tree was one of those almost bare ones, and growing up against the beautiful bit of sandstone cliff its form echoed that of a nearby crack in the rock.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Canyon Wall in Reflected Light

Titus Canyon Narrows

Pre-Dawn Light, San Joaquin Valley

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

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