Category Archives: Photographs: Southern California

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!

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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: Southern California

Creosote Shadows, Morning Tracks in Sand

May 17, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A clump of creosote brush casts a morning shadow across tracks in the sand, Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park

While reviewing some old raw files near the end of 2012, I went back to some Death Valley photographs made during the past few years. I came upon this photograph that I had more or less forgotten. I wonder if at the time I was distracted by other photographs that appealed to me more, or if I perhaps just wasn’t sure how to treat it at the time. In any case, it still surprises me – even though I should know better by now – that I find photographs that I like among images that I thought I had finished with several years ago!

Looking through the other photographs that were part of the series that this one comes from, I recalled that I had gone out into dunes in Death Valley before dawn to photograph pre-dawn, dawn, and early morning conditions. As I often do, I approached these dunes by a roundabout route, not only to make the walk a bit easier but also to avoid other photographers and to have a better chance of finding sand that had not yet been tracked up by other human visitors. This small clump of creosote was growing in shallow sand, and its roots had slowed the windblown sand enough to create a very small hill. In turn, this let the low angle sun cast a shadow that led downhill into lower sand and which crossed the tracks of some wildlife that had passed this way the night before.

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

High Country Desert Canyon

April 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A back-country gravel road twists through the upper reaches of a colorful mountain canyon, Death Valley National Park

The gravel back-country road might be hard to spot in this photograph, but if you look closely near the lower right you may see it twisting around a bend before crossing the canyon behind the rocky prominence at the bottom of the frame. The road begins in desert sagebrush country, then rises to cross the Amargosa Range before descending, sometimes precipitously, down toward the main Death Valley.

Some things about photographing this subject are easy and obvious, but others are a bit challenging and require some attention and then some resistance to trying to turn the scene into something it isn’t. What is easy about this subject? I am endlessly fascinated by winding canyons with overlapping ridges that descend toward the bottom of the canyon, creating a back and forth weave of form. Here the canyon winds from right (at the top) to left to right to left to right to left and, finally, back to the left. And the colors and textures are remarkable, ranging from the very dark rocks at the bottom, through the much lighter slopes right above to the rather reddish rock in the far, upper portion of the canyon. What is hard about it? In many ways, it is easy to pass right through such an area and overlook what it offers, since there really is not single, central, and iconic “thing” to focus the attention. Instead, I almost have to remind myself to slow down, to stop, and to just look… and finally the way to photograph such subjects begins to reveal itself. In addition, because the color palette of this land is so subtle, including mostly pastel shades that subtly contrast with one another, it is important, I think, to resist the ever-present temptation to hype it up into something it isn’t.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Southern California

Brown-eyed Evening Primrose

Desert Automobile Graveyard

Creosote Shadows, Morning Tracks in Sand

High Country Desert Canyon

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