Tag Archives: bank

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite

January 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

This was the closest to the winter solstice that I’ve visited Rhyolite, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by several things. First, the sun came up not only later, but also a bit further south along the horizon – and the light that would usually strike these ruins at sunrise was blocked for a while by a large hill that sits next to the town. Second, it was cold! Third, no one else was there at sunrise! This is a bit unusual since in the Death Valley high season (which arrives a bit later in the year), Rhyolite can be a pretty popular place… for a ghost town… in the middle of the desert… in Nevada. :-)

Because I have photographed here several times before and for the reasons mentioned above, I took a bit of a different approach to photographing the place this time. The winter light, some high clouds, and the different point along the horizon of the sun rise meant that the light was quite different from what I’ve occasionally had to work with in the past. At first I was a bit disappointed to realize that the direct dawn light was not going to strike the old Cook Bank and other nearby buildings. But when some clouds to the east obscured the direct light and high, thin overhead clouds begin to pick up color and fill in the shadows, I saw that other interesting lighting was going to make up for it. At the moment that I made this photograph, those clouds to the east (right) of my position beautifully softened what might otherwise have been some stark and harsh light on the pinnacles beyond the town. They also created an unusual and beautiful quality of light for a few moments – a reddish-pink quality from the light reflected from the clouds but with a few soft quality.

I decided to shoot from a distance with a long lens so as to control the position of the ruins against the background hills, and the longer focal length makes these hills more prominent than they would be if I shot the building with a shorter focal length from a closer position. This also allowed me to more carefully eliminate some distracting elements that invariably appear at old sites like this. (The first times I visited, access to most of the ruins was quite unimpeded. Now fences have been erected around some of them. Part of me regrets the loss of access, but the greater part of me understands that this will allow these buildings to be around longer so that more people will get to see them. I stayed behind the fences.) If you look around on the web a bit, you can find some wonderful old photographs of this town when it was a bustling place with thousands of residents, and when the Cook Bank was a very impressive and modern-for-the-time building.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Tamarisk

January 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tamarisk plants with autumn foliage on the banks of a desert stream, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

I photographed these tamarisk plants with autumn colors on a cold and extremely windy day in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – most likely, if memory serves, during a brief lull in the wind. It was a beautiful and invigorating day – but certainly not one that was conducive to photographing autumn foliage! We did spend the better part of the day in this canyon, but the wind increased and by the end of our work it was almost strong enough to occasionally stop us in our tracks on the hike out… and then it started to rain!

Tamarisk plants can offer some of the most varied colors of almost any plant, though they are often overlooked because they can easily look drab, especially in daytime light, and because their form is not classically tree-like. But depending on the season and the lighting they can have almost every color imaginable: reds yellow, purple, blue, tan, green. This small group of plants was, obviously, sporting brilliant autumn colors. But, in addition, it was lit by the reflected glow of warm colored light coming from a nearby cliff face in full sun.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Water and Granite, Tuolumne River

November 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Swift water flows over granite along the bank of the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

In this section of the Tuolumne River – as in many other places throughout the Sierra Nevada – the river passes through a steep section and across granite slabs that span the full width of the river. As the water flows over the granite it forms constantly changing patterns of rock and whitewater that can only be predicted in general ways. The spot included in the photograph was right along the edge of the river, and you can see the transition between the diminished flow along the bottom edge and the faster and more abundant water in the main channel beyond.

Part of the fun of shooting this sort of subject – and shooting it is a pleasant way to spend an hour along the river – is in trying to find workable compositions in such a changeable subject. And making it even more “fun,” the shutter speed becomes an important decision as it determines just much the image is affected by motion blur and how much of the scene is stopped. Fortunately, digital cameras make this process just a bit more predictable and productive, since they allow the photographer to quickly see the result of composition and shutter speed choices and verify whether or not the educated guesses were correct, and to see just how the infinitely variable and unpredictable patterns of flowing water come together at the instant of exposure.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Siesta Lake, Summer

September 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The middle of a summer day at Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

And, surprise!, yet another photograph dredged up from the archives during my summer crawl through the past eight years of raw files.

Siesta Lake is probably well-known to almost anyone who has driven across Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) from west to east through Yosemite National Park. As the road ascends from into the higher elevations, at one point it rounds a turn and there on the right is this pretty and peaceful little lake, right next to the road, surrounded by trees and boulders, and often with water lilies floating on its surface. Few can resist a quick stop, unless they are in a real hurry or have stopped there many times before. I’ve stopped there lots of times, but I still do pull over for at least a quick look.

This photograph of the lake is a bit unusual for me in a couple of ways. For one thing, it was made during the middle of the day, during those hours that are not supposed to be conducive to photography – and, in fact, which can be very challenging. But on this day there was a thin layer of overcast broken by thicker clouds, and this somewhat muted the midday intensity of the light. In addition, I think that I most often work close views of the grasses and, especially, the flowers growing in the lake – but here I stood back a bit and took in everything from the foreground to the trees on the opposite shore. Finally, the vast majority of photographs I’ve made here are in landscape (wide) orientation, with some even going all the way to 2:1 panoramic formats and beyond.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

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