Tag Archives: alluvial

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

Wash and Alluvial Fan

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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 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

The immense scale of the Death Valley landscape is one of its most impressive characteristics. I’ve written that it reminds me of places like The Yukon, where features stretch on over great distances, so large that it can be hard to make sense of them. One day I decided to go to a location at one extreme edge of the park. Starting roughly in the middle of the park, the trip took me close to two hours of driving, the last portion on a gravel road. I also contemplated visiting another location at the opposite end of the park — it would have been close to a 100 mile drive in the opposite direction, with more than 40 of it on gravel. Driving direct between these two points might have taken six hours and covered close to 150 miles. From many high places in this park you can look across many tens of miles, often so far that the landscape may simply disappear in the distant haze.

It isn’t just the travel distances that are huge — many of the features of the landscape are so large that they defy an accurate sense of scale. The gravel fan in this photograph, spilling out of a narrow canyon at the base of one of the parks large mountain ranges, is likely about ten miles from my camera position and probably at least 1000 feet above the valley floor. It would take a full day to walk there, with no trail to follow. I made the photograph as the first direct sunlight had worked its way down the face of the mountain range.

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

Morning Light on Creosote, Dunes, and Alluvial Fan

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Morning Light on Creosote, Dunes, and Alluvial Fan
Low-angle early morning light on a clump of blooming creosote, sand dunes, and a huge alluvial fan, Death Valley National Park.

Morning Light on Creosote, Dunes, and Alluvial Fan. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low-angle early morning light on a clump of blooming creosote, sand dunes, and a huge alluvial fan, Death Valley National Park.

This is the second of two photographs made close together on this morning in the dunes. I made it just moments after the first direct sunlight had arrived here, illuminating the distant fan, the creosote plant, and the curving shapes of the dunes. This light lasts only a moment, and when I saw it coming I stopped here, found this composition, and waited for the show. I like the way that the foreground light aligns with the softly-lit alluvial fan in the distance, and how the implied line of the incoming light likely traces the angle of the bits of dune at the left edge.

It is still amazing to me that such well-developed plants can find a foothold in this terrain — and beyond that manage to thrive on a high point along the dunes. This is not a friendly environment for most plants — it can be tremendously hot, it is quite dry, and when the winds get going these plants are blasted by flying sand. (I’m a bit too familiar with that last issue!)

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

Lower Panamint Mountains

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Lower Panamint Mountains
The lower reaches of the Panamint Mountain Range at the edge of Death Valley.

Lower Panamint Mountains. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The lower reaches of the Panamint Mountain Range at the edge of Death Valley.

This photograph is my excuse to return to an old theme of my posts about Death Valley National Park. For a place with a reputation so connected to aridity and heat, the clear evidence of the role of water in the formation of this landscape is abundant. In fact, it is hard to locate any place in the park where water had not played an important role. (The repetitive pattern of dips and rises on any drive across “level” roads here is a fine reminder of the importance of flowing water.)

I made this photograph from a vantage point high in the Panamint Mountain Range, from which I could look down at the vast alluvial fans formed by material that was once above the present-day upper reaches of the range. These fans go on for miles, and the amount of material they contain is nearly incomprehensible. More durable material still sticks up above the surface of the material, and washes and gully cut across their surface nearly everywhere.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Beneath Desert Mountains, Morning

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Beneath Desert Mountains, Morning
Desert mountains and morning light spreading across an alluvial fan.

Beneath Desert Mountains, Morning. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Desert mountains and morning light spreading across an alluvial fan.

This is more or less where I had hoped to be in January, even up until a couple of months ago. At that time, careful travel into lonely places was still a reasonable option, especially since I stop only for gas and would have camped well off the beaten track, barely interacting with anyone at all. But wanting to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, I’m following the guidelines to not travel more than 120 miles from my home, and I’m also not going to play games and try to sneak into the Death Valley backcountry… regardless of how appealing that sounds and of how badly I miss the place right now.

This photograph is one of those that illustrates the advice to look all around while making photographs. Sometimes the thing you came to see isn’t the only thing to attend to. I had come to this spot before dawn to photograph a subject that lies directly behind the camera position of this scene, and had worked on it as the scene transitioned from soft, pre-sunrise light through a somewhat colorful sunrise to light that was becoming more harsh than I desired. So I turned around. Here the backlit atmosphere glowed in the light streaming over the rugged desert hills to the east.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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