Tag Archives: cottonwood

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon

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Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon
“Large Cottonwood Tree, Side Canyon” — A large cottonwood tree with fall colors in front of sandstone walls and a side canyon

During a bit of hard drive housekeeping this week I found a folder full of files from a Utah visit in 2012. Because I have a hard drive that is about to fill, I’ve been looking for unused and unneeded files that invariably get left behind after work on various projects — you know, the files that I “just might want to keep around, just in case.” I think that the batch in this folder were transferred from my laptop, and they are most likely files that I worked on quickly in the field and planned to update on my desktop computer later. My first thought was that I’d just delete the folder, but then I looked more closely and found several files that I want to keep.

This is one of the keepers. Although I hadn’t thought if it for quite a while, I now recall this little canyon junction quite distinctly, a place were a smaller side canyon dropped down into the larger canyon through which we walked. Scale is hard to judge against this landscape, but the old cottonwood is very large, especially for one in the base of a narrow canyon. This photograph reminds me of something else, too — I need to get back to these canyons!

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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

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

First Light, Cottonwood Mountains

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First Light, Cottonwood Mountains
First dawn light descends the eastern face of the Cottonwood Mountains and touches the desert floor

First Light, Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First dawn light descends the eastern face of the Cottonwood Mountains and touches the desert floor

A morning like this on the desert flats, surrounded by arid and rugged mountains, waiting for the sun to rise, is very special. We arrived in the dim, pre-dawn light and set out across the flats toward the edge of dunes, passing across scrubby desert plants and over rocky and sandy ground, listening to the steady crunching of footsteps in the silent landscape. We probably should have started a bit earlier, but we lingered a bit too long over coffee, and as we approached the edge of the dunes the sun began to move down the face of the mountains to the west.

The light on the mountains  was set off against a sky darkened by the clouds of a passing weather front, and thin clouds intermittently shadowed the dawn light. It worked its way down from the ridges to the base of the mountains and then it very quickly began to light the terrain around us, first with gently cloud filtered light and soon more intensely. We quickly stopped walking and looked around for any nearby subject that might serve as a canvas for this light — I found a few long plants nearby growing in sand and moved to position them in front of the mountains as the soft light touched them.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

First Light, Desert and Mountains

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First Light, Desert and Mountains
First light on rugged Cottonwood Mountains and low Death Valley sand dunes

First Light, Desert and Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First light on rugged Cottonwood Mountains and low Death Valley sand dunes

The light was not always this lovely on this Death Valley visit — though it was always “interesting” — but on this morning we had it about as good as it gets here. The light on these hills can be fairly beautiful on just about any sunny morning as the first sunlight moved down across the face of the range, lighting up these usually drab hills. But because the sky is often pure blue and there is not variation in the light in those conditions, the maximum color appears only very quickly and often when it is good at one level on the mountains it is either too bright or in shadow elsewhere. But on this morning there were clouds, and just as the light on the mountains reached the valley floor the clouds made for a darker and more dramatic sky, their shadows dappled the upper ridge line, and the very first light slanted across the low plants and dunes.

This light is a very transitory thing and, to be honest, this scene only looks like this for a brief moment between pre-dawn shadow and daytime flat light. But that moment is glorious and magical. When we headed out to this spot before sunrise we weren’t quite sure where we would be at sunrise or what specific opportunities would present themselves. As we approached the edge of dunes, coming around to them from the side, it was suddenly clear that the light was about to arrive. No amount of hurrying would get us to a better spot in time, so we quickly looked around for subjects that we could photograph in this light — a now or never chance. I saw these very low dunes and a few scattered plants, framed a composition, and was ready as the light washed over the scene.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra

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Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra
Fall colors come to cottonwood and aspen groves in McGee Canyon

Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra. Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fall colors come to cottonwood and aspen groves in McGee Canyon

From the valley east of the Sierra the upper reaches of this canyon are not hard to see, though the bottom of the canyon and its entrance point are not so obvious. Pulling off on US 395 some distance from the canyon, a road rises up the alluvial hills at the base of the Sierra and traverses across toward an old lateral moraine. Rounding this hill, the tree-lined creek draining the canyon comes into view and a gentle through sage brush country passes a campground and a pack station before reaching the end of the road and trailhead.

This canyon rises quickly, and from the cottonwood lowlands one can hike into subalpine country in a short time, and it isn’t much further to get to backcountry lakes that seem to sit at the base of the Sierra crest. I paused along the road in the sage brush zone to make this photograph. Fall cottonwood trees are in the foreground, and further up the U-shaped canyon aspen trees have turned yellow. The remnants of an early autumn storm are seen, too, in the dusting of snow high up the rocky slopes at the head of the canyon.

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 | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.