Tag Archives: broken

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Arch in Morning Light

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Broken Bow Arch, Morning - Morning light on Broken Bow Arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monumnet
Morning light on a backcountry arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Arch in Morning Light. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 25, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on a backcountry arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

In a land of many arches… this is another one. :-) I’ve come to understand that natural arches and natural bridges, which still seem miraculous to me when I see them and think about how they form, turn out to be almost absurdly common features in the American Southwest. My first exposure was, not surprisingly, at Arches National Monument, where there are more of them than you might believe if you did not see them with your own eyes. They seem to come in all forms and sizes: impossibly slender and long, small and delicate, big and blocky, towering above the surrounding terrain, invisible unless you happen to look the right direction in the right light, short and stubby, and seemingly infinite additional variations.

Since my first acquaintance with the more famous specimens at Arches National Park, I have had the opportunity to see a few others in less accessible locations. This one required a long and convoluted hike through terrain that held its own attractions apart from the arch – in fact, I had almost forgotten about the arch when we reached it. The photograph is from a high point near the arch – on the opposite side from our approach – and from the shady side of the feature at this time of day. From many vantage points it stands a bit too much against the sky, which did not seem to me to be the most attractive background. From this spot it was possible to find a camera position where the sky was out of the frame, and this allows the shape and texture of the arch to be seen in the light reflected from nearby walls.

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: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Street Light, Yellow Walls

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Street Light, Yellow Walls - A street light attached to the exterior of dilapidated industrial buildings at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.
A street light attached to the exterior of dilapidated industrial buildings at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Street Light, Yellow Walls. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California. March 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A street light attached to the exterior of dilapidated industrial buildings at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

Given the number of times I have ended up photographing this building at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California, you might think that I’d almost be done with it by now. Apparently not. I was back at Mare Island in early March to do some photography with my friends from The Nocturnes (and to drag along photographer and friend David Hoffman). After shooting a newly-accessible area near the waterfront and not far from the Mare Island Museum, our wanderings took us past this building, also sometimes known as the UFO building. (I’ll leave the source of that name a mystery for now…)

These old buildings were part of a very active ship building facility until the mid-1990s when the area was decommissioned. Today many of the old buildings still stand, some kept maintained in their historical state and others now the homes of various industries. As far as I can tell, this weathered building is not occupied, and its exterior is a marvel of peeling paint, wild textures, boarded up windows, external electrical conduits, and more.

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

Broken Branches

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Broken Branches
Broken Branches

Broken Branches. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The broken branches of a fallen tree on the ground in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

These branches belong to what is left of a tree that fell in the area around our campsite in the north east section of the back-country of Yosemite National Park. On a couple of mornings during the time we were there doing photography, I began my morning by wandering a bit through this section of forest, meadow, and dried-up ponds, looking for whatever little miniature landscapes I might find.

Dried and broken branches of fallen and dead trees intrigue me, though they can make very difficult subjects to photograph. Light and color are tricky – too much light and it is difficult to get shadow detail without washing out the highlights; too little light and the subject can go flat and pick up blue tones. And sometimes the patterns are so complex and disorganized as to nearly defy my efforts to make any sort of compositional sense out of them.

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

Badwater Salt Flats, Evening

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Badwater Salt Flats, Evening
Badwater Salt Flats, Evening

Badwater Salt Flats, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of rough patterns in the dried salt desert floor at Badwater Salt Flats, Death Valley National Park.

This is another of the “rediscovered photographs” that I uncovered while reviewing many years of raw files recently. Periodically I go through all of the old archived raw files, partly to cull out a few that I know that I’ll never use, but also because I know that whenever I revisit the old files I discover some photographs that I had forgotten or had never understood at the time I made them. Revisiting the old file archives, I’m sometimes shocked that I passed over certain images.

This one is from the salt flats at Badwater in Death Valley National Park. Technically, this was not shot at precisely “Badwater,” but it is close enough. I was out on the flats in the late afternoon, shooting as the sun dropped behind the Panamint Range. In my view, the best light – with the exception of days when clouds might tower above the Panamints – comes starting right about at the time that the sun passes the line of the ridge as it descends at the end of the day. This takes the incredibly bright and harsh sun off of the playa and provides softer light in the shadow of the range. However, this also presents a problem that almost everyone who has shot here must understand, namely that the illumination by the bright blue sky turns the “white” salt a surprisingly intense blue color. I’ve seen people handle this in a variety of ways: keep the intense, almost gaudy, blue color; do a lot of color correction to get colors that more closely correspond to what we recall seeing; mostly include the sky with its more intense colors; or let the colors go and do a black and white rendition.

Although I’ve “done” this subject in color a number of times, somehow this one seemed to call out for black and white. For one thing, it allowed me to use the interesting shapes of the evening clouds as a dramatic backdrop to the rough and broken shapes of the playa salt polygons. It also allowed me to try an interpretation that focuses on the dramatic potential of the scene.

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.