Tag Archives: arid

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

Sea of Dunes

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Sea of Dunes
Layers of sand dunes lead toward barren desert mountains, Death Valley National Park.

Sea of Dunes. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Layers of sand dunes lead toward barren desert mountains, Death Valley National Park.

Death Valley is often a beautiful place, but there are places in this landscape that can appear quite desolate if you look in the right direction. In many landscapes most of what we see is what covers the scene, but here the underlying geology is often stripped bare and we are left with a landscape of rock and sand. Even where plants grow — more places than you might imagine — they do not cover the landscape in the manner of forests and meadows.

This photograph is about that way of seeing this landscape. The dunes build one after another toward their highest point, much like waves on the ocean. Beyond this there is a rugged desert mountain range. This photograph is what I think of as a subjectively true image. While you would never find a scene that literally looks exactly like this, this interpretation is true to one way of seeing the place.

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

Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains

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Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains
Morning light on blooming creosote plants in the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on blooming creosote plants in the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

While much of my recent visit to Death Valley focused on relatively out of the way locations and subjects, I did spend one night at the Stovepipe Wells campground/parking lot. (If you have been there, you understand the reference.) The idea was that sleeping there for one night would put me in the best location to photograph in the nearby dunes in the evening and again very early the next morning. This photograph comes from the morning session, not too long. before I packed my gear, headed back to my vehicle, made a quick breakfast, and drove to another of those isolated locations.

The ritual of morning photography in these dunes is familiar to me by now. I get up before sunrise so that I can arrive at the point of departure for my walk into the dunes well before the sun comes up. Getting to the locations where I like to photograph can take between 15 minutes and a half hour of walking. Once I’m in position I usually have to work somewhat quickly since the light begins to change quickly. I’ll usually photograph a bit in the soft pre-sunrise light first. Then the first direct light on the peaks to the west alerts me that the direct sun will be here soon, and I turn my attention to finding subjects to photograph in the moments when the light/shadow boundary moves through the scene. I made this photograph considerably later, just as the increasingly bright light was a about to begin washing out the subtle early colors.

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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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

Entering the Narrows

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Entering the Narrows
The path up a desert canyon enters shaded narrows, Death Valley National Park.

Entering the Narrows. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The path through a desert canyon enters shaded narrows, Death Valley National Park.

Most of the time I approach places like this by passing across some sort of alluvial fan, then following a wash that narrows as its walls rise. When I think of these approaches, heat, direct and intense sunlight, dryness, and the sound of boots crunching on rocks come to mind, along with a sense of exposure to these elements. The terrain feels like it is mostly about loose materials — compacted soil, conglomerates, cracked faces, and the water-transported rocks all around.

That all changes when entering narrows like these. The open sky may constrict to a narrow channel far above or it may disappear entirely. The walls, having been scrubbed by moving water and gravel, are smooth and curved. The light becomes soft and often quite blue, coming entirely from the blue sky itself, reflected among the faces as it descends into the canyon. It becomes quiet and my own crunching footsteps are likely the only sound. The expansive world of light and sky on the alluvial fans and washes contracts, contained between the close walls and the next bend in the canyon.

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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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

Dunes, Sunset Light

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Dunes, Sunset Light
Rim light on dunes near sunset, Death Valley National Park.

Dunes, Sunset Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rim light on dunes near sunset, Death Valley National Park.

For the most part I avoided tourist-popular places during my recent visit to Death Valley. However, I confess that I did camp in a well-known parking lot, uh, I mean campground for one night so that I could be closer to sand dunes. On that evening and again the following morning I headed out to some places along the edges and back of the dune fields to photograph this always-fascinating subject.

This photograph comes from the evening shoot, for which I headed to a spot where I find sequences of receding dune crests that are perpendicular to the setting sun. I aimed almost exactly in the direction of the sun just as it was about to drop behind mountains, and I performed some gymnastics in order to shade the lens and minimize flare. On a technical note, this subject provided the opportunity to use a special setup — a medium format zoom lens attached to my full frame camera using an adapter that provides tilt and shift adjustments.

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.