Tag Archives: base

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

Death Valley, Evening

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Death Valley, Evening
Evening light on the playa of Death Valley, with lower slopes of the Panamint Mountains rising beyond

Death Valley, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on the playa of Death Valley, with lower slopes of the Panamint Mountains rising beyond

Since I’ve been traveling to and around Death Valley National Park for more than 15 years now, I’ve seen a lot of the park — but I most certainly have not see all of it, nor have I completely learned how to see everything in it. This is a huge place, varying greatly by location, terrain, season, weather and more. Frankly, the experience of coming to know such a place over time is one of the things I value most about such locations. While I love to “discover” a place that is completely new to me (and Death Valley was that place in the late 1990s for me), the longer process of learning the place and its rhythms more deeply is also, I think, more rewarding. It is wonderful to see a desert gully in evening light for the first time, but it may be even more beautiful to come back to it and recognize an old and familiar friend.

Along these lines, a few years ago, as I continued to push out my own boundaries of experience and knowledge in Death Valley, I began to think more about how to make photographs of things that I might have not thought worthy of a photograph before. I realized that many of these things that don’t scream “photograph me!” are otherwise a core part of the experience of this place: a vast and quiet “empty” landscape, midday sun, haze obscuring great distances, the edge between the last vegetation and a barren playa, a beam of light slanting across an alluvial fan. And if they are central to the sense of the place, it seems that there must be a way to photograph them. And that is a new challenge for me in my Death Valley photography.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite Face, New Snow

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Granite Face, New Snow
Granite Face, New Snow

Granite Face, New Snow. Yosemite Valley, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New snow on ledges and trees at the base of the face of Half Dome

This photograph was made the morning after a Sierra winter storm had coated the high country of the Yosemite Sierra with a fresh coat of snow. The snow did not quite make it all the way down to the bottom of Yosemite Valley, but it covered most of the slopes, fissures, and trees of the walls and peaks around the Valley.

I don’t often photograph Half Dome—I can go days in the Valley without doing so at times—but I did photograph it a few times on this trip. At one point I photographed it wreathed in moving clouds and fog, barely visible. Here I photographed the famous face of the mountain, though I wanted to focus on the combination of new snow and small trees dwarfed by the giant and nearly smooth granite face, and to capture something of the cold, hard feeling of this winter view.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.

Events, Gallery, News, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

A Reprise: “Fractured Granite, Reflections”

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Fractured Granite, Reflection, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks
“Fractured Granite, Reflection” — The base of a rugged granite wall reflected in the still surface of a sub-alpine Sierra Nevada lake

Today I am reprising a photograph that I shared previously since it is part of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit opening this weekend in the Yosemite Museum Gallery in The Valley. 

An exhibition of contemporary art of Yosemite and the Sierra
Saturday, March 1 to Sunday, May 11, 2014
Yosemite Museum Gallery, Yosemite National Park

The first event of the show is tonight…

The public is invited to the
Awards Reception, Friday, February 28 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM

Perhaps I’ll see you there!

Now, to the text of the original post, plus a more recent addition…

Fractured Granite, Reflections. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 15, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The base of a rugged granite wall reflected in the still surface of a sub-alpine Sierra Nevada lake

A few days ago I returned from a 9-day trip into the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park. I was one of a group of four photographers who traveled to a remote location at about 11,000′, where we remained for more than five days, photographing the surrounding terrain morning and evening. We followed the common routine of such work – up before dawn and off to investigate and photograph some valley or lake, back by mid or late morning for breakfast, generally hanging out and doing camp chores during the midday period when the light is often less exciting, then back out in the late afternoon for a few more hours of exploration and photography before returning to camp for a post-sunset dinner. Unlike a typical backpack trip, where one rarely stays in the same place for long, we remained in the same camp for six nights, allowing us to really get to know the surrounding area very well.

With so much time, we were frequently able to return to places that we had already visited – perhaps coming back in the evening after a morning visit, returning to try again to catch a subject that didn’t have the right light the first time, or shooting the subject in various conditions ranging from clear skies to rain. This bit of interesting rock was next to a lake that I walked to on a number of occasions, and on this morning I arrived when the lake was still in shadow but illuminated by light reflected from nearby rock faces. Because it was so early the air was very still, allowing me to photograph this very sharp reflection of the fractured granite cliff where it entered the water. A bit of vegetation just above the waterline has taken on early fall colors.

Addendum: It occurred to me last week that there is a (perhaps tenuous?) connection between this photograph – with its theme of a vertical rock face above placid water – and this one by Ansel Adams that I had an early connection to: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/photographs/ansel-adams-lake-precipice-frozen-lake-and-5056399-details.aspx – I have a personal connection to the place, which I wrote about here: https://gdanmitchell.com/2010/01/14/a-photograph-exposed-submerged-boulders-precipice-lake

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.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fractured Granite, Reflections

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Fractured Granite, Reflection, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks
“Fractured Granite, Reflection” — The base of a rugged granite wall reflected in the still surface of a sub-alpine Sierra Nevada lake

A few days ago I returned from a 9-day trip into the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park. I was one of a group of four photographers who traveled to a remote location at about 11,000′, where we remained for more than five days, photographing the surrounding terrain morning and evening. We followed the common routine of such work – up before dawn and off to investigate and photograph some valley or lake, back by mid or late morning for breakfast, generally hanging out and doing camp chores during the midday period when the light is often less exciting, then back out in the late afternoon for a few more hours of exploration and photography before returning to camp for a post-sunset dinner. Unlike a typical backpack trip, where one rarely stays in the same place for long, we remained in the same camp for six nights, allowing us to really get to know the surrounding area very well.

With so much time, we were frequently able to return to places that we had already visited – perhaps coming back in the evening after a morning visit, returning to try again to catch a subject that didn’t have the right light the first time, or shooting the subject in various conditions ranging from clear skies to rain. This bit of interesting rock was next to a lake that I walked to on a number of occasions, and on this morning I arrived when the lake was still in shadow but illuminated by light reflected from nearby rock faces. Because it was so early the air was very still, allowing me to photograph this very sharp reflection of the fractured granite cliff where it entered the water. A bit of vegetation just above the waterline has taken on early fall 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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


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