Tag Archives: atmosphere

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

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains

April 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Soft and hazy late-afternoon light on Mesquite Dunes and lower Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

The color of the sand dunes of Death Valley changes radically at different times of the day, in different weather conditions, and even seasonally. Many of the photographs of these dunes – the “Mesquite Dunes” in the middle Valley near Stovepipe Wells – are made in the early morning or in the evening. At those times the dunes take on the colors of sunrise/sunset light (generally very warm yellow to golden colors) or the pre-dawn or (better yet) post-sunset light of the sky, which can include a range of colors from blues to pinks to purples and so on. Judging by photographs you might think that the dunes are brightly and intensely colorful. (Or black and white, but that’s a different story.)

Most of the time the coloration is quite different from what we see at the early and late “edges” of the day. The less saturated colors at other times of day can be a bit more complicated to shoot, but they can also create some wonderful subtle effects if you happen to look in the right place at the right time. Late in the afternoon on this early spring day, there was some haze in the atmosphere – perhaps from some blowing dust and/or some clouds and moisture that had been around earlier. As the sun drops at Mesquite Dunes, it goes behind mountains to the west well before actual sunset. When this happens, the dunes are gently back-lit by soft light from the western sky, and the backlit haze mutes the colors of the dunes and, even more, the distant slopes of the rugged Cottonwood Mountains.

My idea here was to isolate the undulating shapes of the softly lit dunes in front of the background of the very, very muted colors and shapes of the lower Cottonwood Mountains, which are obscured by haze. There is some color in this scene, but it is subdued and edges quite a ways towards pastels.

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

Dusk, Death Valley Ridges

April 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on ridges above Death Valley, California.

This photograph was made in the evening from Aguereberry Point, high in the Panamint Mountain Range along the west side of Death Valley. The point is a spectacular overlook with panoramic views in all directions. The number of visitors is relatively low since it is at the end of a gravel road and is a good long drive from most of the places where people tend to stay when they visit the park. It is also windy!

(Those who read the brief technical information about the photographs might wonder at my use of ISO 400 for a landscape photograph – but when shooting at 400mm in windy conditions, a lower ISO makes it darn near impossible to deal with camera vibrations.)

The range of lighting conditions and effects as the day comes to an end at Aguereberry Point is tremendous. To the west (roughly behind me and over my left shoulder as I shot this photograph) the sky is very bright as the sun drops towards the distant Sierra Nevada. Below the Valley and the canyons along the mountains on either side gradually dim and become hazy. As the sun drops and is blocked by intervening peaks and mountain ranges, even the higher peaks and ridges take on these subtle and pastel shadings. It probably isn’t too important to identify the specific ridges in this image, but they are to the northeast of the point. The nearer ridge is along the west side of the Valley (probably part of the Tucki Mountain complex) and the further ridges are a much greater distance to the northeast across the upper Valley.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Richardson Bay, Morning

February 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph was shot from essentially the same position as the previous one, a black and white photo of the same vista, though with shorter focal length. I used a longer focal length here to try to enlarge to closer elements and leave out some of the stuff along the edges, and to minimize the amount of sky to some extent. I liked the color version of this – it was hard for me to think about giving up the nice overall blue haze, but even more to give up the was of light on some of the green grassy areas at the bottom of the frame.

There is quite a bit of stuff in this image, so let me describe what you see. At the bottom of the frame are hills above Marin City. Beyond the foreground hills you see Richardson Bay, which is an arm of San Francisco Bay near the entrance to Golden Gate. Across the bay we see the hills of the Tiburon Peninsula and beyond that looms the peak of Angel Island. In the distance and across San Francisco the buildings of downtown Oakland are visible through the low level backlit morning haze. Beyond are the East Bay Hills and the furthest peak is Mount Diablo, all the way out past Concord.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Richardson Bay and Tiburon, San Francisco Bay Morning Haze

February 21, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The San Francisco Bay and the haze covered East Bay beyond the waters of Richardson Bay.

When I headed over the Golden Gate on this early February winter morning I intended to end up photographing redwoods or along the coast north of San Francisco in the morning before heading south to go back home by midday. I ended up getting distracted by very interesting shooting conditions in the Marin Headlands of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and by the time I finished there I didn’t have enough remaining time to carry through on my original plans. But I did have a little time left, so I headed up to this spot along a ridge above Marin City where I know of a great view out over Richardson Bay, the Tiburon Peninsula, Angel Island, the Bay, past fog-shrouded Oakland, and on to the East Bay Hills.

This is a long lens landscape shot, for several reasons. First, the somewhat longer lens – though 159mm isn’t all that long – compresses distance a bit, both bringing Oakland’s downtown buildings a bit “closer” and foreshortening the very large distances a bit. It also lets me “edit” out some potentially distracting elements close to my shooting position and limit the scope of the image to just those elements that I wanted to include.

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