Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

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

Fiery Furnace, Arches National Park

February 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ridges and mesas recede into the distance beyond Fiery Furnace formations, Arches National Park.

These formations are part of a much larger set of similar structures along the road toward the Devil’s Garden area of Arches National Park. They overlook a large section of the park and beyond. The distant plateau in the sunlight is along the Colorado River, and though they are not visible in this photograph the La Sal Mountains tower even further off. Between there is a lot of rough country full of valleys and ridges and other formations.

The Fiery Furnace area contains sandstone with layers of contrasting color, as see here. This material has been eroded it all sorts of fantastical ways. On this particular day, the light conditions were both interesting and challenging. There were quite a few high clouds and a good portion of the time the sun was blocked by them and the light was somewhat dismal. But as the clouds moved along, the sun light occasionally broke through gaps and cast beams of light that traversed the landscape. When we first stopped here and saw the overcast conditions I almost decided to just move on. But I saw a few hints of this changeable light and decided to try patience first! It took a while, but eventually some of the clear areas in the overcast lined up with our position and we had moments of nice light.

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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Forest Ridge, Fog

February 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Ocean fog overruns forest-covered ridges in Marin County, California

I made this photograph on a very cold, cloudy, gray, and by most people’s standards, fairly miserable day! It was a morning of murky atmosphere, high clouds blocking the light, and thick ocean fog along the coast and into the coastal forests – and it had stymied most of my attempts to find the sorts of photographs I was looking for. I finally decided to just look around – we call this “scouting” – and I eventually ended up in the hills near Mount Tamalpais State Park in Marin County, where I thought I might get above this gray atmosphere. I sort of succeeded, rising above the coastal fog, but the overall haziness and the high clouds were still a factor.

As I drove up the ridge and past an area of open meadows, the view opened back down towards lower hills with fog swirling round them. The hills were mostly submerged in the fog, but in one area the tops of ridges managed to poke through, though at times they, too, were covered. This is one of a small set of photographs I made here before moving on. In order to get the mood that I wanted to evoke from this subject, I made several particular choices in post production. One was to desaturate the colors quite a bit but to not go all the way to a purely black and white rendition, so the dark areas retain the slightly blue-green coloration of the forest. I also did some work with curves to produce the balance of light and dark that I was looking for.

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

Striped Rock, Grass, and Sand

February 17, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A striped rock atop grasses flattened against the sand in the bottom of a slot canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalent National Monument.

I made this photograph in the first canyon we investigated during my late-October 2012 visit to Utah with photographer friends. We drove up a long gravel road and pulled off at a wide spot to find the creek that came out of this canyon, which we followed a good distance upstream. Believe it or not, this was the first time that I had hiked such a canyon and it was exciting to move from imagining the experience to actually doing it! We started out by essentially walking up the creek bed though the flats below where it left the canyon, wading through shallow water and little sand bars. Soon we entered the canyon itself and the “path” involved walking alongside the creek, frequently crossing from one side of the stream to the other to avoid obstacles, and sometimes just walking right up the stream bed, as that often provided the clearest path.

In the location where I made this photograph, the light became very red as it reflected between the upper sandstone canyon walls, and although I was shooting in the shade I had unusually warm toned light to work with. The sand here comes from – no surprise! – sandstone, and was very red in places. This bit of sand had been smoothed by the passage of higher water which had also flattened the grasses and wrapped them around this small rock with its bright red stripe.

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

Dawn Sky, Panamint Range

February 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

First dawn light on clouds above Death Valley, as seen from high in the Panamint Range

I recently “discovered” (or perhaps “remembered?”) this photograph that I made nearly a year earlier during an early January 2012 trip to do winter photography in Death Valley National Park. Winter is a wonderful time in Death Valley, though the season can present its own challenges – not the same as summer, but challenges nonetheless. The challenges include, believe it or not, the possibility of some very, very cold weather, especially in some of the higher outlying areas of the park an up in the mountains, such as here in the Panamint Range. But there are special rewards, too, including the possibility of snow among the peaks and the more interesting skies that can come with the passage of winter low pressure systems that originate in the Pacific Ocean.

On this morning I had gotten out of my sleeping bag well before dawn so that I would have time to drive to this overlook high in the Panamints before sun rise. It was still dark as I drove the last section of the gravel road approach, and its wasn’t until after I arrived that there was enough light to see that this might turn out to be a spectacular sunrise. (When you get up in darkness and drive many miles, you have to take it on faith that something special might occur, and accept the possibility that it might not.) My original subject ideas for this location were not so much about sky as about deep valleys and receding ridges, but when the first sun hit these high clouds I was willing to angle the tripod up a bit to photograph them! This light on the clouds only lasted a few minutes, and after that I turned my attention back to the landscape below.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Fiery Furnace, Arches National Park

Striped Rock, Grass, and Sand

Dawn Sky, Panamint Range

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