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

Trail Canyon, Lower Slopes of Wildrose Peak, Death Valley

April 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon shadows fall across the lower slopes of Wildrose Peak above Trail Canyon and below Aguereberry Point, with Death Valley and the Black Mountains beyond.

The view from Aguereberry Point (and from this location close to the point) is spectacular and expansive, taking in everything from Death Valley itself, stretching almost 180 degrees from left to right, to the Green, Black, and other mountains beyond. To the south and north other ranges merge with the atmospheric haze. The peaks of the Panamint range lie behind, and in places where the view is clear you can look down on the rugged terrain of the east face of the Panamint Range with its rugged ridges and deep canyons dropping towards the Valley. This photograph looks roughly southeast towards the lower end of Death Valley in the area around Ashford Mill. The deep foreground canyon, the bottom of which is just visible at lower right, is Trail Canyon. I understand that a four-wheel-drive road used to come up to Aguereberry Point via that canyon, but that parts have washed out and it can no longer be driven. I think that you can hike it, but that would be one heck of a climb since the base of the canyon can’t be more than a few hundred feet above Death Valley (which is below sea level in this area) and the Point is well above 6000′. The lower slopes of Wildrose Peak rise beyond the canyon.

Surprisingly, this view presents several photographic challenges. Because of the haze that appears when such great distances are part of the scene, I chose to use a polarizing filter for this shot. Timing is important here, too. Arrive a bit too early and the light is harsh and flat. Arrive a bit too late and the foreground ridges are quickly enveloped in shadows as the sun drops behind the crest of the Panamint Range. (Yes, I have made both mistakes in the past.) Knowing this, I arrived a bit earlier than I might have usually arrive to shoot evening light and I managed to photograph the scene before that Panamint Range shadow obliterated the foreground light.

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Commentary, Ideas, Thinking Aloud, Tongue in Cheek

Telling Stories About Our Photographs

April 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 18 Comments

I am as guilty as (OK, more guilty than) anyone else when it comes to writing a lot of words about my photographs! This is ironic in a way, since I believe that, for the most part, successful photographs should be able to say whatever they have to say without a lot of verbal explanation or justification. (There are clearly exceptions to this “rule,” and this is not to say that there isn’t a lot to talk about in photographs.) But some people seem to enjoy the descriptions, so I offer a bit of back story about every photograph, and I love to discuss the photos with folks who share my interest.

Recently I read a post about a fine landscape photograph that someone had produced – the photograph was one of those that is good enough to make me think about how I might create such an image. As I write this now, I have forgotten whose post it was and precisely which photograph it was about. But something that struck me about this post was the tremendously compelling and somewhat scary story that the photographer told about getting the photo. It included things like standing for days in tremendously difficult and seemingly dangerous weather conditions, traveling miles and miles across difficult terrain to find precisely the image that he/she had previsualized, and the tremendous good fortune of finding this perfect image after days and days of enduring challenges that normal people would not or perhaps could not endure.

Some such stories may be true. (Though more often I suspect that they are considerably embellished, but what’s wrong with a bit of fun fiction now and then? :-) But sometimes I wonder if the effect of the photograph would be the same without the spine-tingling story-telling? And I wonder to what extent some viewers tend to look at (or not) photographs that are not accompanied by such compelling and daring tales? What is the balance between viewers being intrigued by the apparently adventure-filled lives lived by photographers and viewers reacting to the intrinsic quality of the photographs themselves?

With this in mind, I offer two descriptions of events associated with the creation of photographs. Think about how the stories affect your perception of the images – for better or worse. ;-)

Story #1

It was a tough morning in the arid desert valley. The oppressive early season heat had arrived and it was over 90 degrees shortly after sunrise. Raging wind threatened a dust storm, and I had been suffering in the heat and dust and dryness for many days. However, this remote location being a place of remarkable extremes, the surrounding mountain peaks were topped by several inches of recent snowfall, rendering many areas inaccessible to anyone unprepared for serious alpine travel. So I faced a choice — endure another day in the sun-blasted furnace of the valley or attempt to struggle up into the alpine zones of the towering mountains and make a photograph. Continue reading Telling Stories About Our Photographs →

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

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains, Morning

April 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Early morning light on Mesquite Dunes and the Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

This is one of the images I had in mind on the most recent late-March trip to Death Valley. When I visited earlier this year in February I started thinking about photographing the dawn light on the lower slopes of the Cottonwood Mountains along the west side of upper Death Valley. I had (and still have!) in mind several locations from which to explore this interesting terrain and light, but among them were a few that placed the Mesquite Dunes (a.k.a. “Death Valley Dunes”) in the foreground. (Why didn’t I shoot this subject back in February, you ask? The weather did not cooperate! There was rarely good light in the morning and, in fact, I had to deal with rain and snow on that visit!)

Besides finding a location from which to line up the elements of the shot, the other keys are having a long enough lens and, well, being there at the right time! And, as I was reminded in February, a bit of luck with the weather doesn’t hurt either. Although it had snowed and rained right before my arrival on this visit, this time the weather ended up being clear for the most part and was even turning downright hot by the time I left later on the day that this photograph was made.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Branch on Playa, Panamint Valley

April 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone branch lies across dried mud on the playa of Panamint Valley, Death Valley National Park.

First, a story about the location. My first visit to Death Valley was sometime in the late 1990s, when the “hiking and biking” club at my kids’ middle and high school did a trip there. The club is a long and interesting story that I don’t have time or space to describe here fully. Suffice it to say that the teacher, “Mr. Hodges,” had for decades taken kids on amazing outdoor adventures throughout the western United States every year, and that the trip that year was to involve visits to several places in the park and then a backpacking trip down to the Valley from up in the Teakettle Junction vicinity. This may sound like a crazy thing to do with a bunch of school kids, but the group had a record of success. I was along as a parent chaperone since my oldest son was a participant in the trip.

The “readers digest” version of the story of the trip is that, as is often the case near the beginning of April, we encountered an astonishing range of weather conditions. Early on it snowed and the wind blew at gale force levels. This forced us to abandon our initial backpacking plans after we had already camped overnight near Teakettle Junction, and to head back down to the Valley. We readjusted our plans and decided that we might still be able to do an overnight hike down the length of the upper Valley and (leaving out a bunch of intervening adventures in this narrative) we arrived at Stovepipe Wells and set up camp… just in time for a tremendous dust storm to blow in. The next morning the “bus” arrived that was to take the kids and a few of the chaperones home (the rest of us were in a truck carrying tons – literally – of gear on the roof rack and in a trailer) and we headed up to cross Towne Pass. It turned out that the “bus” (which was more or less a large airport shuttle-type van) was ill-equipped for these conditions and after struggling up the pass and then racing down the other side, the transmission blew out at the bottom of the descent into Panamint Valley. Those of us in the truck pulling the trailer arrived a few minutes later to find a group of scared kids and parents who had just experienced more excitement than they wanted.

I have a strong visual memory of “Mary,” one of the parents, who had just had a bit too much excitement walking quietly north away from the road and across this playa. Ever since that time, this place that most people would probably blow right past, has almost always warranted a stop as I passed by on my way out of the Valley. This trip was no exception. I left my camera gear in the car and just walked a ways out onto the playa. As I walked, even though I had been certain that my photography for this trip was finished, I started noticing some of the small details on the playa… and I went back to my car to get my camera, then returned and made a few hand-held exposures of some of these small subjects.

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