Category Archives: Photographs: The Southwest

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

Desert Canyon Creek

March 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sky and sandstone reflect in the surface of a desert canyon creek

I can’t say that I’ve yet spent enough time in these Utah canyons to fully understand their cycles, but it seems to me that there must be an ongoing back-and-forth between forces that heap sand into them and the forces that move that sand away. Whether the canyons are dry or wet when I visit, the effects of water are evident everywhere. Low places hold it long after the flow has stopped, and they can be deep pools or bowls of mud. The passage of water is recorded in dry form in ripples in sand and desiccated mud. And when the creeks flow, their banks often have terraces cut into the deposited sand when the water was at varying depths.

This bit of creek bed was at the base of a short drop below a small cascade, and it must have collected sand during some period of greater flow. The water was flowing sedately and quietly when we were there, yet the evidence of its ability to cut into the bottom of the canyon is clearly visible. The light had a blue-purple coloration here under the overhand of a large cliff, and the golden reflections in the mud and water are from plants and sunlit cliff faces high above.

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

Seepage, Canyon Wall

March 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Water seeps across the patterned rocks of a Utah canyon

We began our day’s hike and photography in sage-covered flatlands, where we left our vehicles at the end of a gravel road and soon dropped into a small canyon. The canyon quickly deepened and cut into the flatlands and sandstone walls soon rose around us as we continued. Soon we reached a junction where a stream flowed and we followed the stream, walking in it, along side it, and occasionally leaving it to cross higher ground where the canyon curved. The deeper we traveled into the canyon, the more intimate the landscape became as high walls cut us off completely from the surrounding terrain and bends in the canyon limited our view ahead and behind.

In the area of this photograph the canyon was rock all the way to its bottom, where the small stream flowed along the bottom of the shallow v-shape and water from springs seeped down across the rock, supporting the growth of plants. The water left behind sediments that colored the rock and formed patterns against the curving cracks, seen here in the soft light filtering down from high above, reflecting blue from the open sky and red from the sandstone canyon walls.

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

Oak Leaves, Reflections, Spring

March 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Autumn oak leaves, reflections of sky and sandstone cliffs on stained rock

This was a wonderful autumn day of exploration, re-visiting a familiar place, wandering with friends, and photography. We drove a short distance down a back-country road from our campsite to get to the start of a canyon, beginning in a spot where there is little in the surrounding landscape to indicate what is hidden here. We left our vehicles on the flats at the edge of a shallow valley and dropped into it. The valley quickly narrowed and it wasn’t long until sandstone walls towered above as we traced the meandering course of the stream that had cut this canyon. We travelled slowly, making detours as the spirit took us, and halting to concentrate on photographic subjects we discovered along the way.

Eventually we arrived at a sort of “half-subway” (referencing a well-known Utah landscape subject that is far from this spot) where the creek rounded a bend in a narrow section of the canyon and has cut away rock back underneath the overhead walls. At the lower end of this section we arrived at a wider flat area, though the canyon was still quite narrow, and we paused to eat, talk, make photographs, and ponder. Across the bend in the creek a smooth rock wall dropped down from beneath a thickly vegetated ledge to the banks of the creek, and water seeped from cracks below the ledge, providing enough water to keep the rock constantly damp, and autumn leaves from an oak tree on the ledge were scattered on the rock.

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

Red Rock, Dusk

March 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on sandstone formations, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

On our first day in this part of southern Utah last October we settled into our primitive camp, hung out for a while, and then headed off to an area of beautifully formed sandstone in the late afternoon, where we planned to do our evening photography. When we arrived the sun was still well above the ridge to our west but its light was intermittently muted by thin clouds that softened the contrasts between light and shadow. For perhaps a couple of hours we worked this landscape of carved red rock, with its gullies, ridges, sand-filled flats, holes and every curving shape and texture you can imagine.

There was much to see, and after I photographed the most obvious subjects I continued to look and began to see less obvious features. As the sun dropped behind the ridge and shadows stretched across this area I first felt a kind of urgency to make photographs while the light was still good. I continued shooting right into the post-sunset dusk hour, when color came to the thin clouds and washed this landscape, already red from rocks and blue from haze, with intense reddish-purple light. I made a series of photographs in this area above a carved sandstone gully, and soon it was too dark to shoot any more. I/we looked up from our cameras, enjoyed the quiet for a few moments, then put on headlamps and found our way across rocks and back to where we started and then drove back to camp.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: The Southwest

Desert Canyon Creek

Seepage, Canyon Wall

Oak Leaves, Reflections, Spring

Red Rock, Dusk

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