Category Archives: Photographs: Utah

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

Small Tree and Pink Rock

November 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree with yellow autumn leaves grows from a crack in pink sandstone, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The narrow canyons and slots of South Utah, which I’m just coming to know, are full of surprises at every turn. The “turns” are a literal source of the surprise, since you can’t generally see far up or down the canyons and each turn literally does reveal things that were not visible a moment before. As you progress up (or down) the canyons, the nature of the rock constantly changes as you pass through layers of angled strata of rock – smooth and deep red one moment, pale and broken another, and then light pink or gray. The incline of the canyon changes, as does its width – one moment you are walking on a veritable sidewalk, smooth and wide, and the next you are trying to find your way over rocks and boulders, walking up the middle of a stream, trying to avoid deep and sucking sand, squeezing through a slot, or looking for a higher route around an impassable section. The canyon might be rocky and seemingly devoid of plant life… or you might have to squeeze your way among trees and bushes.

This small canyon presented most of these variables at one point or another. Most of the time we were acutely aware of the stream in the canyon, as our route was in, around, or across the water almost constantly. Here a few small bushes found cracks in the rocky walls with sufficient soil to survive, and the light from far above bounced back and forth between the high canyon walls, picking up the reddish color of the sandstone.

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

Sandstone Patterns, Dried Plant

November 9, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A dried plant and sandstone patterns in a southwest desert canyon, Utah

I was in Utah twice this fall, most recently with my friends Charlie and Karl to photograph a range of desert canyons and similar terrain. I’ve written before that I’m very new to photographing Utah, having seriously shot there for the first time only this past spring. But I’m trying to make up for lost time! Overall, I have spent something like a total of more than five weeks there this year! Yes, I like shooting in Utah. :-)

On the previous visits, I went to quite a few of the well-known locations – largely the national parks – and began the process of getting to know and understand that place a bit. On the most recent visit I was fortunate to be traveling with people who have shot there for decades, and I benefited from their long experience. Getting a bit more off the beaten track, we barely touched national parks – passing through Zion and visiting some remote areas of Capitol Reef. Instead we poked into a range of little canyons and valleys and so forth that don’t have the prominence of the parks. The specific locations are perhaps not that important since the state seems to be filled with similar places. This was my first real experience with the intimate desert canyons and river/creek courses that carve deeply into the landscape, where midday light bounces and reflects into the deep landscape in ways that are utterly unlike the California locations where I most often photograph.

This photograph was made in such a place, the first narrow canyon that we visited. Parking in an inauspicious spot along a gravel desert road, we dropped into a wash and wandered upstream, soon entering a narrow canyon as the sandstone walls rose beside us. Before long the canyon was narrow enough that we had to continually cross back and forth across the creek or simply wade straight up its course. As the canyon narrowed, direct sunlight no longer made it down to the creek – instead the light reflected from the higher cliff faces and bounced down into the canyon, toning the light red from the sandstone surface. In this photograph the cliff and two large pieces of sandstone contain angled strata and reflect the light in various ways as a small and seemingly dead plant sits in a crack in the rock.

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

Aspen Grove, Old Road

November 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

An old dirt road winds into the heart of an aspen grove in full autumn color, Dixie National Forest, Utah

This is another of the “could have been anywhere” photographs, both because little scenes like this can be found all over the American West and because it is a scene that I simply happened to notice while passing by. So, the specific location is most certainly unimportant, though I’ll say that it was along a gravel road running through a section of the national forest in roughly the Zion/Cedar City area, a road that we had turned up more or less randomly and then explored for perhaps a couple of hours before turning back. The goal of that little drive had been to get into or as close as possible to some extensive forests of colorful aspen trees that we had seen from a distance. We succeeded.

There is something evocative on a number of levels about a simple scene like this one – with factors including the literal and subjective aspects of the changing season, the image of the small road disappearing into the grove as it wanders off to an unknown place, and the light of autumn filtered through the golden canopy of aspen leaves. If you don’t pay careful attention when you are there you might miss it, but the golden color suffuses the entire understory when the light is just right. (Photographers and painters may notice this sort of thing more than most people, since we/they are used to dealing with the otherwise blue coloration of the shadow light.) This sort of scene is extremely transitory. While we can permit ourselves to believe that both the green time of summer and the snowy time of winter are relatively permanent, no such illusion is possible during the brief span of literally a few days when the aspen color comes to these groves – they are different every day, and sometimes you can literally see the color going away as the wind blows down the leaves.

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

Boulder Mountain Aspens and Distant Peak

November 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A distant peak in alpenglow above the fall aspen color on Boulder Mountain, Utah.

We had anticipated the huge aspen groves on the flanks of Boulder Mountain as we approached on highway 12 from the west, having seen these trees earlier in the year, last April, when we crossed the mountain in spring before the new leaves appeared. We weren’t sure what we would find since, a) Boulder Mountain is high and b) we had seen high elevations aspens earlier during the trip that had almost completely lost their leaves. As we climbed toward the mountain from the town of Boulder, we began to encounter aspen color, but as we climbed it was apparent that we had missed the most colorful phase of this years transition.

That was OK, though. Even a bit pre- or post-peak, the aspen colors can still be spectacular. We stopped at the first place where we could see large aspen groves leading on up the incline toward the higher portions of the mountain and made some photographs. Then we continued on, rounding the shoulder of the mountain to find some very large and still quite colorful groves ahead of us. Although the light was starting to fade as the end of the day approached and as high clouds moved overhead, it seemed worthwhile to try to photograph these trees with a long lens. I continued shooting through sunset and soon the last direct sun left the trees and the more distant mountains. Here there is still a bit of light on the highest peaks to the east, seen faintly through the haze.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Utah

Small Tree and Pink Rock

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Sandstone Patterns, Dried Plant

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Aspen Grove, Old Road

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Boulder Mountain Aspens and Distant Peak

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

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