Tag Archives: barren

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

Wash and Alluvial Fan

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Wash and Alluvial Fan
Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

Wash and Alluvial Fan. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

The immense scale of the Death Valley landscape is one of its most impressive characteristics. I’ve written that it reminds me of places like The Yukon, where features stretch on over great distances, so large that it can be hard to make sense of them. One day I decided to go to a location at one extreme edge of the park. Starting roughly in the middle of the park, the trip took me close to two hours of driving, the last portion on a gravel road. I also contemplated visiting another location at the opposite end of the park — it would have been close to a 100 mile drive in the opposite direction, with more than 40 of it on gravel. Driving direct between these two points might have taken six hours and covered close to 150 miles. From many high places in this park you can look across many tens of miles, often so far that the landscape may simply disappear in the distant haze.

It isn’t just the travel distances that are huge — many of the features of the landscape are so large that they defy an accurate sense of scale. The gravel fan in this photograph, spilling out of a narrow canyon at the base of one of the parks large mountain ranges, is likely about ten miles from my camera position and probably at least 1000 feet above the valley floor. It would take a full day to walk there, with no trail to follow. I made the photograph as the first direct sunlight had worked its way down the face of the mountain range.

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

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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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: Nature

Desert Mountains, Blowing Dust

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Desert Mountains, Blowing Dust
Immense desert mountains partially obscured by blowing dust.

Desert Mountains, Blowing Dust. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Immense desert mountains partially obscured by blowing dust.

For some reason, this week I seem to be reviewing photographs from Death Valley and many of them want to be monochrome. This is the second in two days. Recently I’ve been thinking about the subject of rugged, desert ridges receding into distant haze, and when I came across this old raw file it seemed to fit right into that theme.

My recollection (not completely certain, since the photo was made nearly eight years ago) is that we were headed up Death Valley towards a dust storm rising in the flats and dunes north of Stovepipe Well. That’s not an uncommon occurrence at this time of year. The atmosphere was filled with that diffuse haze that often develops around dust storm, and as we approached the source of the blowing sand we began to see clouds of dust rising above the landscape in the center of the valley.

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.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees, Fog

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Winter Trees, Fog
Tule fog surrounds a stand of. barren winter trees, Central Valley.

Winter Trees, Fog. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tule fog surrounds a stand of. barren winter trees, Central Valley.

Something tells me that California Central Valley residents might disagree with me when I say that the winter tule fogs are among the biggest attractions of the region. I understand that days (or weeks!) of the gray can be depressing, and I’ve heard the stories about traffic accidents in zero-visibility fog. It is wet. It s cold. You can’t see through it. It interferes with travel.

But I love the mystery that the tule fog brings to this area. On clear summer days this is a broad, flat landscape that is largely agricultural. That has the potential to give it a bucolic quality, but the nature of modern Central Valley agriculture is that it also borders on an industrial process. But when the fog rises the world shrinks down to a radius that might be measured in yards rather than miles, more distant distractions disappear, details are muted, and the shallow but thick layer of fog glows luminously on a winter morning.

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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