Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Photographers

Chasing Spring Color In The Temblor Range

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Chasing Spring Color In The Temblor Range
Photographers Robert Eckhardt and Michael Frye photographing spring wildflowers in California’s Temblor Range

Chasing Spring Color In The Temblor Range. Carrizo Plains National Monument, California. April 2, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photographers Robert Eckhardt and Michael Frye photographing spring wildflowers in California’s Temblor Range

It has been my tradition for a number of years to spend the better part of a week photographing in Death Valley National Park around the beginning of April. It turned out that this year’s spring bloom in the Carrizo Plain area was reported to be stupendous, and when I heard that friends of mine would be there photographing I altered my plans to pass through there on my way to DEVA, giving myself an evening and a morning to photograph the wildflowers and landscape.

The group of us decided to head out to some hillsides at the base of the Temblor Range, which runs along the edge of the plain. We drove as far as we could up a dead-end gravel road, then got out, loaded up camera gear, and headed up into the hills, where lots of flowers were covering sections of the hillsides. Here photographers Robert Eckhardt and Michael Frye photograph in a field of yellow and purple high above the base of the hills and the Carrizo Plain.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Ghost Towns, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned Stamp Mill

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Abandoned Stamp Mill
An abandoned water-powered stamp mill high in the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park

Abandoned Stamp Mill. Death Valley National Park, California. April 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An abandoned water-powered stamp mill high in the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park

It seems that every national park or monument has both a natural and human story, or perhaps what might be seen as a story about the relationship between the two. While the power of natural forces (heat, water, geology, and more) is abundantly obvious in the huge, austere landscape of Death Valley National Park, the human history of the place is rarely far from view. It begins with the evidence of people who lived here long before European-origin settlers came to the place, evidence that can be seen in rock art scattered throughout the park, in the recognition that many settlements (current and now-abandoned) have a very much longer history than we may think, and in the remnants of those earlier populations who still occupy and identify with this landscape.

Perhaps more obvious is the more recent history of those who came to look for mining success. (There are places in the park where this still takes place.) Some examples are obvious to the casual visitor, but the more time you spend in the back-country area of the park the more you understand that this particular history is everywhere — though not usually as obvious as this example. This stamp mill, built to crush gold ore, is amazing in a number of ways. Perched at the end of high ridge in rather remote location, it was powered in the most unlikely manner… by water piped in from a spring over twenty miles away. The location is stupendous, and it is easy to think that practical issues may not have been the only considerations in choosing the site. From here one can look down thousands of feet to broad alluvial slopes leading towards Death Valley, but one can also look further into the distance and see the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Desert Hills, Morning

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Desert Hills, Morning
Morning light slants across desert hills, Death Valley National Park

Desert Hills, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. April 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light slants across desert hills, Death Valley National Park

If you know Death Valley well, you already know this — but to many of you it may come as a surprise to realize just how much of Death Valley’s character is the result of the actions of water. The main valley itself was once the floor of a huge lake, and quite a few formations were formed beneath its surface. Once you realize this you begin to see the evidence everywhere. And in the time since the lake’s waters receded, the effects of water have continued in other ways. Evidence of flowing water is everywhere, from the gullies inscribed into the hillsides, to the washes that are found almost everywhere, and including the gigantic alluvial fans forms as floods carried eroded material from the high mountains out onto the desert floor. This extraordinarily dry landscape is, oddly enough, one of the easiest places to see the effects of water.

I had originally planned to photograph in a salt flat area where a bit of water flows, but when I arrived and found that my intended distant subject was under dim, cloudy light I decided to go with plan b and move on to higher ground. I had scoped out this location on a previous evening and was intrigued by the overlapping patterns of darker hills rising above the alluvial fan and the way they recede into distant haze. In the morning I could tell from a distance that there was light up here, so I quickly headed this direction, arriving just as the first light touched some clouds overhead. As I continued to photograph the clouds moved, bringing alternating periods of hazy gloom and then beautiful light.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Hills, Edge of the Carrizo Plain

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Hills,Edge of the Carrizo Plain
Evening light on a stream bed dropping though Temblor Range hills toward the Carrizo Plain

Hills, Edge of the Carrizo Plain. Carrizo Plain National Monument, California. April 2, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on a stream bed dropping though Temblor Range hills toward the Carrizo Plain

On this early April day I drove south from the San Francisco Bay Area on highway 101, leaving that route and heading east near Paso Robles to travel through the impossibly green spring landscape of Central California hills. I wasn’t alone. This being a beautiful spring Sunday, many others were out here to look for spectacular wildflower displays. And here, as in many other similar California locations, we found what we were looking for.

I continued to the east, eventually arriving at this high plain, often a desolate place but for a few weeks in wet years a place full of growth and color. I met up with friends who were already camped there, and we soon headed out to look for places with special color. We followed a small gravel road up into the foothills of the Temblor Range — we parked where it ended, loaded up packs, and continued on up into the hills of foot, heading toward some extensive fields of colorful wildflowers. As we topped the first rise I paused an looked back down at the base of the hills where the gully of a small stream winds its way toward the plain.

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 and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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