Tag Archives: butte

Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Approaching Storm, Monument Valley

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Approaching Storm, Monument Valley - A storm front approaches the iconic towers of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
A storm front approaches the iconic towers of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Approaching Storm, Monument Valley. Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona. October 12, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A storm front approaches the iconic towers of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Considering that we only passed through Monument Valley on a drive between two other locations and that we happened to arrive when a storm front was passing through, I have to consider myself lucky to have made any photographs of the location at all on this visit. We were on the long drive between Moab and Springdale, so we unfortunately could not afford to hang around long waiting for idea conditions – so I went ahead and shot in the “weather.”

Quite a few of the photographs were made in actual rain – as in, it was raining where I was shooting, or I was shooting into or through curtains for rain. However, the nature of this storm was that a line of weather would come through, there would be a bit of clearing, and then the next squall line would arrive. So between the bouts of rain there were some moments of sunshine, and the sunshine not only dried things out a bit but it also made the clouds more visible Here a very large cell was building over some of the iconic Monument Valley formations. I chose the vertical format and only included a bit of the solid ground so as to emphasize the size and height of the clouds.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Towers, Morning Light

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Towers, Morning Light - Morning light silhouettes towers and ridges, Arches National Park, Utah
Morning light silhouettes towers and ridges, Arches National Park, Utah

Towers, Morning Light. Arches National Park, Utah. April 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light silhouettes towers and ridges, Arches National Park, Utah.

On my last morning at Arches National Park in early April, I made one final quick trip back up into the park before hitting the road back to California. I was up very early, arriving in the park before sunrise. I had a string of possible subjects in mind, all of which depended to some extent on how the morning light played out. They include the possibility of photographing the setting full moon against some arch or tower that I might be able to put in the right spot relative to the moon, a strong intention to photograph the Tower of Babel and The Organ in very early light, balanced against a desire to shoot some other arch or tower in similar light, the thought that there might be some chances to shoot details of the Park Avenue area a bit later, and as always the potential to shoot straight into the morning sun and haze – a favorite habit of mine.

After getting to a couple of these subjects, the series of receding ridges, buttes, and towers to the east seemed interesting. I used a long lens to photograph this in order to edit down the portion of the landscape that I would work with and to compress the distances. The scene was trickier than it might appear – because I was using the long lens I had very limited options to move from side to side and still keep an interesting composition. In addition it was windy – always a tricky thing when working with very long focal lengths. And, of course, I was shooting in to the light and the backlit atmospheric haze of the early morning – not that I’m complaining about that, since it is some of my favorite light. In the end, I came up with this composition which includes a bunch of features that I can’t even identify! ;-)

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: Utah

Cliff, Green River Overlook

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Cliff, Green River Overlook - The canyon of the Green River beyond a band of sandstone cliffs, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
The canyon of the Green River beyond a band of sandstone cliffs, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Cliff, Green River Overlook. Canyonlands National Park, Utah. April 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The canyon of the Green River beyond a band of sandstone cliffs, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

I was in this spot primarily to photograph the late afternoon and evening light on the canyons, cliffs, plateaus, and mesas around the Green River. (I’ve recently posted a couple of other photographs of that subject.) One of the many striking aspects of the geology in this park is the sudden cliffs that drop from the edges of large flat areas. The upper portion of Canyonlands park, called the “Island in the Sky” is such a place. It is a large and relatively flat plateau, and if you disregard the more distant surroundings it seems like a prairie or perhaps a high desert grassland. But when you venture to its edges you most often find, on at least three of its sides, that there is a sudden drop off where the river systems below have eroded the surrounding terrain up to the edges of giant sandstone strata. I’m not an expert on the area, but one thing I read pointed out, if I recall correctly, that there is an upper plateau (the island in the sky), a 1000 foot drop, another plateau marked by the White Rim, and then another sudden drop into the depths of the surrounding river canyons.

So this bit of vertical sandstone is the upper portion of part of that first 1000-foot drop-off, in this case with the White Rim plateau and then some additional canyons beyond. Shooting late in the day, I was pointing the camera almost straight into the light – something that I often like to do. This allowed me to capture the faint shadow in the atmospheric haze formed as the light passed between two buttes at the upper edge of the frame. It also created a bit of a challenge in retaining detail in the fully shaded dark-colored cliff face! I was able to capture this in a single exposure that tested the dynamic range of my camera, and then bring back a bit of the cliff detail in post. Now, if I had just had someone stand, or better yet, dance on that cliff edge… Any volunteers for my next visit? ;-)

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

White Rim, Evening

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White Rim, Evening - Evening light on the white rim landscape of the Stillwater Canyon area of the Green River, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
Evening light on the white rim landscape of the Stillwater Canyon area of the Green River, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

White Rim, Evening. Canyonlands National Park, Utah. April 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on the white rim landscape of the Stillwater Canyon area of the Green River, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

This was an evening of very special light in the Canyonlands, or so it seemed to me. I love soft, hazy conditions and perhaps prefer them to super clear and sharp conditions in many cases. So I had not been at all disappointed earlier in the day to see that the rugged canyons below the “island in the sky” section of Canyonlands were obscured by dust that had been stirred up by very windy conditions. We visited this spot earlier in the day and I identified it as one of several places I thought I might want to photograph at the end of the day, even though the atmosphere looked almost “murky” during the earlier visit. I knew that the edges of the upper cliffs of canyons, for example along the White Rim, could well be nicely lit in the evening light. So as we wandered around other nearby areas, looking for other shooting prospects, I became more and more certain that this is where I wanted to end up.

When we came back here a bit before actual sunset, it was cold and rather windy. The wind had been an issue though out my photography here and at Arches, and I was getting used to timing my shots for the lulls between gusts. I put on warm clothes and wandered out to the edge of the cliffs, where I found a small number of other photographers as well. Earlier I had not only decided on shooting here, but I had also scoped out a couple of likely compositions. One (which I posted earlier) was a horizontal composition that included the bottom of the canyon that would be out of this picture and to the right – a deep canyon that was carved by the Green River and its tributaries. The other was this vertical composition, that angled across the tops of a row of flat areas along the White Rim where canyons alternated with the flat surfaces above with more distant mesas and more mountains beyond. The atmosphere did something that it can often do when the air is hazy – it gradually changed from having a low contrast and filmy appearance with lots of golden tones and began to become more transparent as the light lowered and came in at a lower and lower angle. Here, very close to when the sun dipped below the horizon, the very low angle light strikes the west-facing cliffs and skims across the tops of the low hills in the foreground and on top of the mesa-like formations beyond.

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.