Tag Archives: canyon

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

Fractured Canyon Wall

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Fractured Canyon Wall
Fractured canyon wall detail.

Fractured Canyon Wall. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fractured canyon wall detail.

With this photograph I believe I’ll conclude my nostalgic return to photographs from my 2012 autumn visits to Utah. It was a special autumn for my in Utah, as I was able to visit twice for a period adding up to almost a full month. On the second visit I was able to travel into some out-of-the-way locations, a few of which were shared with me by people who live and photograph there. That was quite a privilege. It has been too long since I’ve photographed there. Perhaps I can return next year?

This is simply a bit of canyon wall, and the specific location is hardly relevant at all — you can find rock like this all over Utah. Part of what attracted me to this little vignette was the boundary between darker old rock and the lighter rock below where some of the older material has obviously broken away. The surface of the upper, darker area is fascinating to me, and a close look reveals remarkable colors, textures, and shapes on its surface.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Showers

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Sierra Showers
“Sierra Showers” — Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

As I was getting ready to post this photograph I was pondering, as usual, what to write about it. As I considered the focus of what I ended up writing here today it occurred to me that this one photograph could be the starting point for an entire book. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep this post considerably shorter than that.) It could naturally lead to subjects including my visits and return visits to certain locations in the Sierra, the experience of spending long periods in the backcountry, what and how to see there, the sensory experiences of things like afternoon rain, how non-iconic subjects evoke these things, my good fortune in photographing the backcountry in the company of good friends during the last decade, and much more…

But that’s far too much for this post, so I’ll just share a little background. A group of five of us isolated ourselves at a very high backcountry location for a week back in 2013. We photographed morning and evening every day, in very diverse conditions, and we hung out together through the slower midday hours. There were many lakes nearby, and on this afternoon I had walked the short distance to one of them and was photographing when the afternoon showers began. For me, this photograph conjures up all of the associations I have with that trip and with afternoons like this one.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Cliff Detail

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Cliff Detail
Diverse fractures and surface patterns on the sandstone walls of a Utah canyon.

Cliff Detail. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Diverse fractures and surface patterns on the sandstone walls of a Utah canyon.

On this late-October day, a cold one in this part of Utah, our little band of photographers took a long drive on a gravel road. Eventually we stopped at an inauspicious pull-out — I don’t recall a sign, though there may have been a small one. We loaded packs and set out across some dry terrain, and soon entered a small canyon at the base of tall hills, a canyon that looked much like many other such canyons.

This was not a large canyon, and our walk into it was shorter than the walk into some longer canyons we had investigated. It was also a rough little place, and it did not give up photographs as easily as some other more-picturesque places. Near the far point in our exploration we came upon this remarkable bit of sandstone canyon wall, with patterns on the surface of the rock that reminded me of sunbursts.

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 and Amazon.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Arch and Shadows

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Arch and Shadows
“Arch and Shadows” — Utah red rock country arch in a shadowed canyon.

It might seem that improbable features like this are everywhere in Southern Utah. While some are familiar icons in national parks like Zion and Arches, similar features are found in less accessible locations. If you poke around enough you can experience them in relative quiet and solitude. I’ve wondered why it is this way in Utah, and I think there are several explanations: such features really are quite common, and some that warrant national park status are in non-park areas for reasons including uneasy compromises with extractive industries.

A group of us wandered into a lovely red rock canyon, inauspicious at the start but with sandstone walls that soon began to tower and close us off from the world beyond. These are intimate places, where your awareness is mostly confined to the space between the canyon bends in front of and behind you, and where the silence is only broken by occasional birdsong and the gentle sounds of water.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.