Tag Archives: canyon

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

Arch and Canyon

June 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large arch above a Utah sandstone canyon

I have been down this canyon a couple of times now. The walk begins in what might seem like an inauspicious place in rather plain terrain. Soon the route drops below the level of the plateau and enters the upper portion of a shallow canyon. Continuing to walk into this canyon, the walls soon rise higher and the canyon narrows and twists. Before long the expected sandstone walls appear.

As is usually the case, we followed the course of the creek along the bottom of the canyon, alternately walking in it, walking next to it, or cutting over higher ground between bends in its course. Places like this are full of distractions, and stops are frequently to photograph water seeping over rocks, trees with fall colors, arrangements of rocks and pebbles, reflections and always the sandstone canyon walls. Eventually we reached a familiar personal landmark along the route where we stopped to photograph, eat, and talk. A short distance beyond and the around another bend, and a path led up to a high point, from which there was a view through this arch back into the canyon.

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

Sculpted Canyon Rock, Plant

June 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone plant grows in a crack in sculpted Utah canyon sandstone

These canyons feel isolated from the rest of the outside world. In the narrow sections, the only view of the familiar world may be a small strip of sky directly overhead. The tall canyon walls, which may be only feet apart, block any view of the surrounding terrain, and the focus of my attention narrows down to the section of the canyon where I find myself, the walls where I stand a some short distance ahead before the canyon twists out of sight.

Not only are we visually cut off from the outside, but we are also isolated acoustically. No sound makes it down into the bottoms of the canyons from the above. In the canyon there may be the sounds of quietly flowing water, and perhaps the tinkling sound of water dropping over rocks. A bird may sing. The sound of my footsteps echoes between the walls. In this spot, daytime sunlight high above bounced between the canyon walls, diffusing until a wash of soft red-tinted light reached the canyon bottom. Horizontal layers had eroded at varying rates, a jagged crack cut the canyon wall vertically, and one plant grew in the crack.

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

Canyon Walls, Plant

June 16, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone plant grows from sandstone walls deep within a Utah slot canyon

I had the opportunity to spend a significant period of time photographing in Utah back in October of 2014. Although I got a late start with Utah (only photographing there for the first time a few years ago) I have been doing my best to make up for lost time. I’ve spent between a month and a month and a half there in total over the past couple of years. During that time I have come to love autumn in the canyons. Oh, heck, I think I love autumn just about anywhere in Utah!

I walked into this canyon early on last fall’s trip. I had arrived at my first Utah stopover place the night before, looked at a map, and figured I might find something interesting in this general area. (I’m not always a careful advanced planner, preferring to wing it depending on the light and my mood.) The walk began in terrain that was more of a wash than a canyon, but before long the sandstone walls closed in and narrowed and I was walking through slots. The light in such places can be magical at the right moments, usually when the sun rises high enough in the sky to project into the upper reaches of the canyon, where it bounces and diffuses as it fills the canyon below with saturated light.

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

Wash and Eroded Hills

April 22, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light shines on eroded hills and a desert wash.

This was the final morning of my spring photographic excursion to Death Valley. On the last day of these visits I always seem to follow the same general ritual — I get up well before dawn (of course!) and visit one final photography location very early, then go back and break camp before leaving the park and starting the long drove back to the San Francisco Bay Area. This means that I almost always pick a familiar “sure thing” location for the last morning, and one that is not too far from wherever I camped the night before. I rarely make this a spur-of-the-moment decision, instead typically deciding ahead of time where I’ll go — there isn’t a lot of time to waste on this final, long day. On this trip I headed back to a little area not far from a familiar Death Valley icon. (I would stop at that icon, but only if the conditions turned out to be spectacularly unusual — I certainly don’t need another photograph of it otherwise, as beautiful as it is.)

I turned off the main road onto the gravel side road, slowed to a crawl, parked and got out with camera gear in hand, and quickly settled into the quiet and stillness of this place in the moments before dawn. Even though I have been to this spot many times, I’m still surprised by how quiet it is and by how few others go here. Although I know specific locations that might offer reliable and predictable photographs, once I’m here I prefer to take my time and look for and at things that I had not previously noticed. At first — and it was the case on this morning — it seems like there is little special to see, and I may momentarily wonder if I’m going to be able to find photographs. But as I slow down and begin to see, I invariably find things that I would have missed if I had not given the place some time. This photograph was the result of spotting a little path up to a higher spot — the path itself intrigued me so I followed it, and I was happy to find that it overlooked this little bit of classic Death Valley geography.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: canyon

Arch and Canyon

Sculpted Canyon Rock, Plant

Canyon Walls, Plant

Wash and Eroded Hills

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.