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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Tumbleweed, California Wildflowers

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Tumbleweed, California Wildflowers
A tumbleweed rests in the middle of a field of California spring wildflowers.

Tumbleweed, California Wildflowers. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tumbleweed rests in the middle of a field of California spring wildflowers.

Let’s say you live in California or close enough to get here quickly. Let’s say you like wildflowers. Let’s say you have a bit of flexibility in your schedule. Go now! In many areas of the state — mostly the oak/grassland country of Central and the coastal and inland mountain ranges and foothills, along with many desert areas — the wildflower season is reaching its quite spectacular peak.You don’t need to know the supposed Best Wildflower Spot In California… because this is more or less a statewide phenomenon, and because all you really need to do is point yourself toward one of these kinds of places, and because you’ll actually have as much fun discovering your own wildflower spot as you would have joining the hordes at the over-crowded places in the news. (Recently we saw absolutely stunning wildflowers — the kind that make you gasp out loud — as we drove past them on main highway routes through hills and desert.)

We ran into this particular display along one of those highways. I had driven past it a bit more than a week ago without seeing anything all that out of the ordinary… but a week later it was definitely at its peak. (If you were to go to this specific spot now you would likely find that it had passed its peak.) The tumbleweed plant was a gift from the photography gods and goddesses, as the scene really required something to interrupt the nearly continuous carpet of flowers.

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, Photographs: People In Landscape, Photographs: Photographers, Photographs: Southern California

Three Photographers, Dunes And Mountains

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Three Photographers, Dunes And Mountains
Three photographers working the morning light atop a sand dune ridge, with desert mountains byond.

Three Photographers, Dunes And Mountains. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three photographers working the morning light atop a sand dune ridge, with desert mountains byond.

Five of us went out together to photograph in the dunes on this morning. It was only after I arrived in Death Valley that I discovered that a group of photographers and friends was down from the Yosemite area and camped nearby. We made a loose plan to meet up the next morning before sunrise and head out into the darkness early enough to be well into the dunes before the first good light arrived.

We made it out there and went to work, photographing in the predawn light, then as the sun came up, and continuing until the light began to lose its early hour magic. One fun thing about photographing with other photographers is that when things slow down a bit… we sometimes make photographs of one another! A side benefit of this is that almost all of us have in our collections photographs of some pretty interesting and talented people, and a second benefit is that sometimes they share photographs they made of us. Here my three friends are set up on the spine of a dune, working the early morning light against a backdrop of tall desert mountains.

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

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

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

Hikers, Desert Canyon

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Hikers, Desert Canyon
Two hikers entering the narrows of Titus Canyon

Hikers, Desert Canyon. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two hikers entering the narrows of Titus Canyon.

The stream beds of desert washes often seem to me to be the “freeways” of the desert. They can (but not always!) provide relatively easy walking through rougher terrain. The periodic flow of water, along with the mud and rocks caught in its flow, both clears the washes of vegetation and leaves a relatively flat surface of small stones and dried sediment. Over millennia the water flowing through the washes does the hard word of trail building, wearing down obstructions and leveling out the rough places. (OK, there are exceptions — those chock stones that fall into canyons and block them, along with the periodic “dry falls” that may be unsurmountable.)

This canyon is often used by motor vehicle traffic, but following heavy rains that made the route impassable to vehicles it turned into a much more pleasant place to hike, and a group of us walked up through the spectacular narrows in its lower reaches. Lower in the canyon it is sometimes quite narrow, though in this location it begins to broaden a bit. To understand the scale of the terrain look closely and you’ll be able to spot a couple of hikers.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Wildflower Fields, Carrizo Plain

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Wildflower Fields, Carrizo Plain
Yellow and purple wildflowers from plain to hills, Carrizo Hills National Monument

Wildflower Fields, Carrizo Plain. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Yellow and purple wildflowers from plain to hills, Carrizo Hills National Monument.

This is a straight up “look at all the flowers!” photograph, made just before the seasonal peak of the bloom in the Carrizo Plain. Something like this happens in many places in California that seem almost desert-like during most of the year. Once winter rains start (and if it isn’t a drought year…) there is sudden appearance of new plant life in the middle of winter, and these dry places start to turn green. The process continues until some point in March, during what I like to call the “impossibly green season,” when whole hillsides become greener than you might imagine. Then there is a brief period in late March and into April, before the grasses again go dormant, when wildflowers may appear in abundance.

If you visited this location during most of the year you would likely describe it as a very dry and hot place, and you might even be tempted to regard it as desert. But when I visited this year and extensive spring bloom was just getting underway. I photographed from just about the lowest point in a wide valley, at the edge of a dense field of yellow flowers. Beyond, the yellow flowers transitioned to equally dense fields of purple flowers. Then the yellow resumed and extend right on up the slopes of the distant mountains.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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