Category Archives: Southern California

Commentary, Conservation/Environment, Ideas, Locations, News, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Southern California, Thinking Aloud

Death Valley on My Mind

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Wash and Alluvial Fan
Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

Wash and Alluvial Fan. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Morning light on a gigantic alluvial fan at the base of desert mountains, Death Valley National Park.

This morning I am waking up in a place that is almost literally on the other side of the world from my “home country” of California. As I look out the window from a home in Kosovo toward high mountains at the start the day I am thinking about the storm impacting my state today, and the deserts regions such as Death Valley are especially on my mind as I read reports of tropical storm Hilary.

Our natural impression of places like Death Valley National Park (the part of California’s desert terrain that I know best) is of dryness, heat, aridity… of places where little grows and where challenges human visitors. It isn’t quite that simple, but there is truth to this. Our biggest concerns in such places are often the heat and the scarcity of water.

But I have long been impressed by the fact that there are few locations where the impact of water is more clearly visible than in the desert, especially in the rugged terrain of places like Death Valley. The valley was once a lake. Remnant water from that lake still appears and flows there. The tremendous mountains on either side of the valley were eroded and formed by water, and monumental alluvial fans flow out of side canyons everywhere. Deep watercourses cut through rock, and a close look at stones reveals that they were moved by water.

Even when we recognize the landscape-forming power of water, we still think of the landscape as now being static — formed by forces that worked in the past but now have left a stable geography. A few rocks fall, occasionally a wash overflows and takes out a small section of a road, a playa may fill temporarily with water… but soon everything is back to “normal” as it was.

But this morning it sounds like we may experience much more profound changes as Hilary sweeps though, the sort that occur at intervals measured centuries. Those of us who love this landscape may find our access cut off and that much changes after this storm. I’m both excited by and fearful of these effects — but in any case this is a powerful reminder of the scale of the forces at work in these places we love.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary, Photograph Exposed, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Southern California

A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa”

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(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)

Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa - Black and white photograph of two "moving rocks" on the Racetrack Playa at Death Valley National Park. Morning light with unusual clouds, and the Grandstand in the distance.
Black and white photograph of two “moving rocks” on the Racetrack Playa at Death Valley National Park. Morning light with unusual clouds, and the Grandstand in the distance.

Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2006. © Copyright 2006. G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Moving rocks, lenticular clouds — morning on the Racetrack Playa.

This photograph from Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa is one of the first I made when I began photographing this landscape seriously, and it remains one of my favorites from the park — yet it also carries a flaw that I’ll describe below.

My first visit to Death Valley National Park had been about seven years earlier at the very end of the previous millennium, when I was one of several adults accompanying a group of middle school and high school students on a visit that was to include a short backpack trip in the Cottonwood Canyon area. The story of that trip deserves its own article, one that would include snow, near-hypothermia, winds that blew down tents, a retreat from the pack trip, an attempt to hike down the upper portion of Death Valley, water shortages, a dust storm, a dangerous situation with a bus, and more.

I’ll never forget my first view of Death Valley on that first visit. We arrived in the park after dark, stopping between Towne Pass and Stovepipe Wells at a small campground a few thousand feet above the valley floor, where we set up in the darkness and went to sleep. Having never seen the Valley before, the next morning I unzipped my tent and stepped outside to see the stupendous “oh wow!” landscape of Death Valley and the mountains on the far side in the beautiful morning light. I was hooked, and I’ve been going back annually since then. Continue reading A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa” →

Photographs: People, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Urban/Street, Southern California

Umbrellas, Getty Center Garden

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Umbrellas, Getty Center Garden
Umbrellas, Getty Center Garden

Umbrellas, Getty Center Garden. Los Angeles, California. December 30, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Visitors walk through the garden on a rainy and foggy afternoon day at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, California.

I’m probably just about the only person who goes to the Getty Center hoping for rain… and who is regards himself as lucky when he gets rain… and fog! :-)

We were in LA during the past week to visit my daughter and our son-in-law, and we decided to stop at the Getty on the start of our return drive to the SF Bay Area. I’m always fascinated by the grounds of the Getty and by the opportunities to photograph people on those grounds, and interesting weather makes this even more appealing. On top of that my daughter had told us about the wonderful Rembrandt exhibit and I was looking forward to the Irving Penn “Small Trades” photographs on display. (It is a great exhibit – see it if you are in the area.)

I often confess that as much as I enjoy the art at the Getty, I enjoy the Getty as architecture and urban landscape just as much. Although few of my Getty photographs appear here, I very much enjoy photographing the forms and lighting of the buildings and the gardens. It was raining lightly when we arrived, and by the time we made it up the hill fog had settled on the ridge. I actually made well over 100 exposures throughout the day. Many were shot quickly as momentary conjunctions of people and light and atmosphere appeared and just as quickly disappeared. I happened to find myself on a walkway overlooking the fogged-in garden just as a couple groups of umbrella-bearing visitors encountered one another near the sharp point of this path.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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