Tag Archives: cactus

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Cactus-scape

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Cactus-scape
Close-up view of beavertail cactus, Death Valley National Park.

Cactus-scape. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Close-up view of beavertail cactus, Death Valley National Park.

Many of the photographs that I brought back from Death Valley last week feature the grand, immense scale of the landscape — which is only nature given the, well, grand, immense scale of the landscape of the place. Today I’ll take a break from those images and look share something on much smaller scale — a cactus-scape, if you will. This is a very close view of a small portion of a beavertail cactus. As I worked on landscape photography in this location I realized that these cacti were everywhere, so I soon switched to a different camera with a macro lens.

This subject may bring up the question: will this be a “super-bloom” year? I don’t have a definitive answer to that, but I’ll share a few observations. I have heard that above-average rainfall in about the November time frame supports those extraordinary spring blooms. That did not happen this year. But there was rain — quite heave and even damaging rain — much earlier in the season, and there was some additional rainfall during the December-January period. I did see some very young shoots of new plants already starting to pop up in a few promising areas. My bet? No super-bloom, but more of a good to better-than-average year for wildflowers.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cactus, Escalante Canyon, Fall

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Cactus, Escalante Canyon, Fall - Cactus plants grow in front of brilliant fall colors along the Excalante River, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Cactus plants grow in front of brilliant fall colors along the Escalante River, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Cactus, Escalante Canyon, Fall. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cactus plants grow in front of brilliant fall colors along the Escalante River, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

I saw and stopped to photograph this little cluster of cactus plants on our second, mostly wind free (!) visit to this area of the Escalante. I had just photographed the trees in the far distance of this shot, which grew right next to the river at a place where the trail crosses the stream. As I moved on, the trail rose a bit above the river bed and things seemed a bit less directly affected by the passage of the water in the river – and near here I found this group of cactus plants growing in a clump.

The light was special here. The area of the photograph was in shadow at this time of day, with the sun well behind the high cliff walls that towered overhead. But the light from the west was able to strike the upper walls of the canyon to the east, and this light, warmed in tone by the red sandstone rock, cast a glow down of warm light down into the canyon. It intensified the colors of the cottonwood trees, and cast some better light on the cactus plants.

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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