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

Evening Storms

June 24, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening rain clouds and dust storm above the Panamint Mountains, Death Valley National Park

This was a wild evening in Death Valley. While the clouds were generally moving toward clearing, we first saw extreme weather of several types. Down close to the ground there were big, billowing clouds of sand and dust being lofted above the Valley floor. High above that wildness huge weather front clouds built above desert mountains.

In the evening I decided to go our for one more photographic chase, even though the weather hardly seemed conducive to photography. In this case I resorted to an approach that I’ve used before in storms like this one, namely to put on the long focal length lens and shoot into the maelstrom from a distance. It this case, two storms were present at once: While high winds whipped up the sand and dust storm closer to the ground, overhead the monumental clouds of a rain storm towered over the desert mountains.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite Slabs

June 23, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Filtered sunlight on granite slabs, Yosemite National Park

While many may associate waterfalls with Yosemite, especially if their experience is mainly with Yosemite Valley, it is simply granite that comes to mind first for me. Yes, there are beautiful forests, and many wonderful lake, and rivers, and wildlife, and more — but all of those play out against the backdrop of the ubiquitous Yosemite granite. It comes as cliffs, shattered rock on mountaintops, domes, and beautiful slabs.

I spent a week photographing around a backcountry lake in early September 2015, during the time of awful wildfires and a lot of smoke — in fact, that smoke was partially responsible for the filtered light on the day I made this photograph. Within a few minutes of our campsite, huge slabs of granite rose up from near the shore of the lake and climbed many hundreds of feet up toward sharp granite ridges high above. This section, glaciated in the past and then fractured by ice and water, was sculpted into beautiful shapes.

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

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Sidewalk Shoppers, Night

June 22, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shoppers and tourists walk past Chinatown shops at night, San Francisco

Allow me to continue to indulge my (relatively) new obsession with handheld night street photography! This is yet another photograph made after dark in San Francisco, in a popular tourist area full of people, shops, and plenty of wildly colorful artificial light. This might look a bit like just a photograph of a crowd, but when I look closer I’m fascinated by the variety of faces and activities and ways of engaging that I see.

It was only perhaps a couple of years ago that I discovered that I can use small handheld mirrorless camera set to high ISO to photograph in the nighttime city environment. In the past this was sometimes marginally possible in very well-lit areas, but most such photography required a tripod and its attendant disruption of the scene — people behave very differently when they see a big camera on a tripod. But now it is quite possible to roam with a very small camera and produce viable photographs that can even be printed rather large.

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

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

June 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cloud-filled sky at first light above desert mountains and canyon, Death Valley National Park

As I post this photograph on the summer solstice, this location is perhaps not a place you would want to be right now. I understand that temperatures in Death Valley National Park have been in the 120 degree range already this summer. But back on this March morning the scene was a lot different — clouds from a passing Pacific weather front obscured the dawn light, and there was a pleasantly cool wind at this location high in the Panamint range as the morning light arrived.

This view looks down through one of the many gigantic canyons of the Panamint Range, a sight that reminds us of just how important the flow of water has been in the creation of this remarkable landscape. In the middle distance the salt flats of Death Valley are visible at the base of the Black Mountains, and above that the demarcations between mountains and clouds and sky and light are hard to see, and the terrain of the rugged Death Valley landscape almost merges with the ephemeral terrain of this sky.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Evening Storms

Granite Slabs

Sidewalk Shoppers, Night

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

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