Category Archives: Photographs: The Southwest

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

A Story in Red Rock

November 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Broken rocks spread across a layer of sandstone in evening light

This is another photograph from my first evening on this trip in this particular part of Utah, from a day when I had met up with friends and traveled out to find a campsite where we would stay for the next few days — our base camp for exploring red rock and canyons and for sharing meals and conversation. After setting up camp and settling in, we headed out for our first evening of photography, and would up in a nearby landscape of sculpted sandstone.

We began shooting mostly together, finding and exploring some obvious and quite impressive subjects — each working on his or her own photographs but staying mostly in a group. Eventually we began to split up and wander off to do our own individual exploration. Later in the evening I ended up in an area of massive sandstone benches and ridges and potholes, and as the dusk came on and the light turned red/burgundy I was above a small sandstone canyon descending toward the sagebrush country below. This is a simple scene, but I like to think about a few secrets that it may reveal. It is easy to see such landscapes as being static, but the fact is that they are always changing, though mostly on a time scale that is much longer than that of our lives. But occasionally there are obvious clues, and here the clearest is the scattering of fractured rock that has failed from the seemingly solid face in the upper part of the scene, a hint about how it came to be that the lower flat surface runs into the upper wall.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees, Gulch

November 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cottonwood trees in full autumn color line a gulch as it passes between sandstone hills

I came upon this beautiful cottonwood-filled valley on a short drive I took out of Boulder, Utah while waiting for my late-afternoon check-in on my first day in a motel after a week of camping. As you can imagine, I was looking forward to this change in accommodations and the chance to get a shower and sleep in a real bed!

My drive took me a short distance out on the Burr Trail, which ends in Boulder. I’ve been over a good portion of this route (which is a road, despite the “trail” in its name) a few times in the past, using it to get to Boulder from a somewhat isolated area of Capitol Reef National Park. My goal on this little drive was a long, narrow sandstone canyon that is just a few miles out of town, but it turned out that the canyon was less interesting in the light I had to work with than this stretch of cottonwoods was. I came upon this site in a spot where the road descends through a sharp set of hairpin turns as it drops toward the valley. Along this section there are turnouts that provide open views into the valley and along its course as it winds into the distance. From this spot the valley was filled with more cottonwoods than I usually see around such a creek — typically they line up along its banks, but here the filled the valley between the red rocks from side to side.

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

Streamside Foliage, Autumn Color

November 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn foliage along a Utah stream at the base of sandstone cliffs

This photograph includes several things that attract me. For one thing, the subject is visually very complex — and I enjoy the challenge of trying to create a coherent composition from such subjects. For another, it includes several visual elements that I like a lot. One is the juxtaposition of foliage and red rock, which is found so frequently in the Southwest. Another is the state of the fall color transition here — it is at the interesting point where there are still quite a few green leaves, but where the transition is unmistakable. On top of that, the varied foliage includes a wide range of original colors, from bright green (and the autumn hello) of the main trees to the blue-green and dusty colors of the smaller plants at the bottom of the frame.

This little vignette is found along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, where the river provides water along its course to support a lot of rich vegetation. More specifically, here the river makes a curve at the base of a very tall section of sandstone cliff, a bit of which is seen beyond the trees. The cliff is so high and the canyon so deep that little direct sunlight makes it down to this spot, and instead there tends to be a lot of beautiful soft light.

Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Aspen Trees, Kaibab Plateau

November 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Nearly bare autumn aspen trees on the Kaibab Plateau near Grand Canyon National Park

This story is partially about how I finally got to Grand Canyon National Park… sort of. Believe it or not, I had never visited this iconic national park of the American West. There are a perhaps surprising number of parks that I have not visited, perhaps because I’ve long been quite happy to go straight back to my Sierra Nevada whenever I had time to travel, at least since I was a kid. There is also my long-time failure to get to the Southwest, which I have written about before. In any case, I had failed to see this park — aside from through an airplane window at 35,000′ — at all… until this year.

I had arrived in Kanab, Utah late in the day. After checking into a motel I was considering things to do on an evening that didn’t look overly spectacular from a photographic perspective. As I looked at maps I realized that this area is a sort of gateway to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. (I really don’t do a lot of research before heading out to shoot!) Checking a bit more I saw that the road south from Kana could take me up to the North Rim. I had heard of that place. ;-) So, late in the afternoon I started driving, half expecting that I might not make it before dark, but I had no better plan. The road generally rises at it heads south, and before long I was in a beautiful area of high forests that believe is the Kaibab Plateau. Although it seemed to late in the season, before long I saw that among the many bare aspen trees there were still a few with leaves, so I started watching for them. I saw this grove near the end of a meadow and couldn’t help but stop and make a photographs in the evening light. I soon realized that I didn’t have a lot of time to spare, so I got back on the road and continued south, arriving at the rim of the canyon at dusk to find that most facilities were closed for the season and there were few people about. Yes, I could tell that there is a very big canyon there! No, there wasn’t enough light left to really photograph it. I walked along the rim for a few minutes, pondered briefly, returned to my car and headed back to Kanab. At least I can no longer be accused of never having visited The Grand Canyon!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: The Southwest

A Story in Red Rock

Cottonwood Trees, Gulch

Streamside Foliage, Autumn Color

Aspen Trees, Kaibab Plateau

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