Tag Archives: arid

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

Ridges and Haze

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Ridges and Haze - Morning haze and receding ridges above Death Valley.
Morning haze and receding ridges above Death Valley.

Ridges and Haze. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning haze and receding ridges above Death Valley.

There is “stuff” to photograph virtually anywhere you go in Death Valley – from the popular, iconic locations to the furthest back-country areas to nondescript turn-outs along whatever road you happen to be on. One of my goals on this January 2012 trip was to shoot some less-obvious locations. While the image is perhaps not “less obvious,” the location is probably not anything you are going to find in your park guidebook.

Early one morning I was out and about, at least partly thinking about where not to shoot – not the obvious places that first come to mind on a Death Valley morning. (I have nothing at all against photographing those places, too, especially when the conditions are just right.) I ended up more or less randomly heading up a road into some mountains, but without a specific goal in mind. I was simply driving along and watching for the “right” conduction of form and light and color. Several times I thought I saw something, but I didn’t stop, instead just making a quick mental note that I might want to come back to these spots and shoot them. (I didn’t on this trip, but I have them filed away for a future visit.) I finally arrived at a junction where the light was good, got out, set up camera and tripod, and set about looking for subjects.

Sometimes I have a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for, but it might surprise some people that I occasionally – perhaps more than you might think – have no specific photographic objective in mind when I get out the gear and begin my “hunt.” I like to joke that I could find myself almost anywhere with a camera and tripod and eventually find something to shoot within 50 feet of my location. (Occasionally, it might even be a good photograph… :-) While I most certainly do like certain locations, in many cases it isn’t so much about the specific place as it is about hunting for and discovering the visual opportunities presented by whatever place I’m in.

So, I started looking around. And I started making photographs. I photographed a nearby hill that caught some “first light” from the east, with more distant hills in the background. I photographed a long view of a haze-filled valley scene. I pointed my camera up a gully filled with rocks and desert plants. I make a picture of a non-description ridge top pinnacle with interesting clouds behind it. And I put the longest lens I had on the camera and shot almost into the sun to photograph this amazing sequence of stacked ridges high along the spine of a nearby mountain range.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Hikers, Titus Canyon

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Hikers, Titus Canyon
Hikers, Titus Canyon

Hikers, Titus Canyon. Death Valley, National Park. March 28, 2010. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hikers in Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

There are essentially two ways to get to this portion of Titus Canyon in Death Valley National Park – you can either do a very long drive from near Beatty on gravel roads or you can walk a short distance up from the base of the canyon along the eastern side of Death Valley itself. I’ve done both. The road is quite an experience – in any other park it would probably be regarded as a very special thing, especially the last portion above Death Valley where it twists and turns down a slot canyon that is in places barely wide enough to a vehicle yet so tall that it can be hard to see the tops of the canyon walls. (It is not exactly a bad road, but it isn’t trivial either. There are some very exposed sections where it crosses the mountain ridge and descends past Leadville. Although there are reports of people using lesser vehicles, take seriously the recommendations for reasonably high ground clearance and some from of all-wheel drive.)

However, on this visit I simply parked my car at the base of the canyon, shouldered my camera equipment, and walked up the canyon a ways. There is, of course, much that you probably won’t see if you enter the canyon this way, largely because the road is so long that you won’t likely cover much of it on foot. However, I think that you can more clearly sense the scale of the lower slot canyon when traveling of foot. I included two hikers who happened by to give a sense of that scale to the landscape.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Red Cathedral, Zabriskie Point

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Red Cathedral, Zabriskie Point
Red Cathedral, Zabriskie Point

Red Cathedral, Zabriskie Point. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on the Red Cathedral and eroded terrain at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

This photograph was made at what may be the most famous location in Death Valley, the overlook area at Zabriskie Point. The photograph does not include the famous view of the spire of Manley Beacon, which is just out of the frame to the left in this image. Instead, the photograph focuses on the “Red Cathedral,” a ridge to the right of Zabriskie that rises above the rest of the surrounding eroded hills, is a darker and reddish color, and presents a deeply eroded face.

It is not an easy subject to photograph, and I still have some additional ideas on how else I might approach the feature as a subject. Exposure is a challenge when shooting the Red Cathedral. At first, as light comes to other nearby areas, this feature remains dark. When the sun does finally arrive here – as it is in this photograph – it rakes across the foreground gullies, brightly illuminates the light-colored ridge to the right, and picks off a few small areas of the Red Cathedral while leaving others in deep shade. To add insult to injury, there is a good chance that a photographer will be set up in a position that eventually gives very flat front lighting to the ridge. I may this exposure very shortly after the sun hit Manley Beacon and just as it was starting to light up the foreground gullies and small hills.

Related: See my extensive posts on Photographing Death Valley

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Playa Surface, Panamint Valley

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Playa Surface, Panamint Valley
Playa Surface, Panamint Valley

Playa Surface, Panamint Valley. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cracked and dry surface of the playa in Panament Valley, Death Valley National Park.

This micro-scene could be found in many locations in Death Valley and, for that matter, in many places in the USA and around the rest of the planet. But my little rectangle of the patterns of drying and cracked mud comes from the surface of the Playa (sometimes called “Panamint Lake?”) in upper Panamint Valley in Death Valley National Park. I wrote previously that it was the last day of my late-March photographic visit to Death Valley – I had finished my photography in the main Valley and had started the long drive back to the Bay Area. After crossing Towne Pass the road descends into Panamint Valley to a junction where I most often go south towards Trona and Ridgecrest and beyond.

Just before this junction the road crosses the playa, an extraordinarily flat surface formed when silt washed down from the surrounding mountains occasionally pools and gradually dries, forming what may be the flattest surfaces on the planet. As the moisture evaporates the mud cracks and splits into these interesting semi-geometrical patterns.

For no particular reason other than that this is a spot where I often make one final stop before leaving the park, I pulled over and wandered out onto the playa. I enjoy walking on these often-immense flat surfaces, but there is something very odd about the experience, too. Perhaps it is the slightly odd feeling of walking on such a large floor-flat surface in the natural world, or it might be the deep silence and stillness. In any case, as I wandered around not too far from the road I started looking a bit more closely at the patterns of cracks and soon decided that my photography was not quite finished yet – so I went back to the car to get my camera and made a small series of hand-held photographs with the camera pointing straight down. (The “straight down” shooting raises a question: How should the photograph be oriented? The horizontal orientation shown here is what I saw as I made the photograph… but I also wonder about rotating it 90″ clockwise.)

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.