Tag Archives: creek

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

Autumn Leaves, Sand

January 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The thing that most often first catches my attention in the bottom of slot canyons, such as this small one in the Zion National Park high country, is the way that they twist between closely spaced vertical walls. There is virtually nothing quite like this in our experience. But the thing I notice first is not necessarily the thing I remember most. I often wonder how others might regard my photographs, since I know that they cannot share the full context of the images that I know from being in these places. (I’ve often said that we, as the photographers, are perhaps the least able to see our own work objectively, since we cannot easily put aside these non-photographic things that are no longer present in the purely visual medium within which we work.) When I think of these canyons I think of the sound, often deadened by the sand and perhaps by vegetation, and of the feeling of the air, which always different from the feeling of the air outside the canyon – most often cooler when the “outside” air is warm but also warmer when the canyon provides shelter from cool-season winds. And it those canyons with water flowing through them, there is the constant, though often gentle sound of water flowing and trickling.

I also usually end up slowing down and looking at many small things that might not first be seen – the leftover pattern of water than may have flowed through weeks or months earlier, place where the sand has been marked by the passage of a small animal or by grass moving across its surface in the breeze, the mixture of rocks that must have come from distant places, plants growing in odd cracks in the rock, patterns in the rock walls, the passage from one rock layer to another, and more. On this fall day it had been windy and lots of autumn “stuff” was littering the canyon floor, which here was pink sandstone sand, further colored by the glowing light reflected from the red rock canyon walls.

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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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens and Granite, Autumn

January 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Aspen trees with golden autumn leaves grow among boulders on a rocky eastern Sierra Nevada slope

Before my single day of eastern Sierra Nevada aspen photography this season, I had been concerned about the quality and timing of the color – and reports by some other photographers who visited just before I was there were not encouraging. Reports mentioned trees that had turned earlier than usual (true) and trees that turned without producing special color and so forth. Compounding my concerns just a bit was the fact that my schedule required me to be there a bit earlier than the time I would typically regard as being prime for aspen color. But I’d rather shoot one day of less-than-stupendous aspen color than miss the entire show, so up into the eastern Sierra above Bishop, California we drove.

I was pleased to find that there was actually a lot of great color. Some of the usual “hot spots” that people seem to flock to were perhaps not as amazing as they can be, but after photographing the aspens for some years I have found some odd little personal places where I could find good color – and in a few places color that was downright excellent. I photographed these trees rather late in the day, perhaps after many people who prefer to photograph aspens in the sun had already left. I intentionally sought out an area that I knew would be in shade since I often prefer the muted and softer light this brings. Here the trees are not quite so thick since they grow on very difficult and rocky slopes. But what they lacked in density they made up for in color!

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

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

December 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Large cottonwood trees with autumn leaves along the Escalante River, Utah

In many places like this one along the Escalante, the terrain seems to be largely a continuous repetition of one horseshoe bend after another, and each bend encourages me to want to see what will be ahead. When the river bends one way, the bottom of the canyon may be in sunlight; when it bends the other – and perhaps narrows around the apex of the bend – everything may be in deep shadow from the tall cliffs above the narrow canyon. In these bends it is often necessary to cross back and forth across the stream as the canyon narrows. (That ritual was a new one to me as a long-time Sierra Nevada hiker and backpacker. There a stream crossing or two in a day would typically be about it, and we tend to make a big deal out of them. Here you might cross a stream more than a dozen times in less than a mile!)

The location of this photograph was at one of those crossing points. The trail approached my camera position from up the canyon and around the bend along the right (from this point of view) side of the stream, crossed the river down among the trees, and then headed across a low hill to the left that skirted between the river and the base of the cliffs. When I arrived at this point and walked underneath this wildly colorful group of cottonwoods, I thought I’d like to find a way to photograph them, the river, and the dark upper canyon. So, before wading through the water I went ahead a bit and climbed up on a sort of ledge to this overlook from which I had a good view up the canyon. Because it was a partly cloudy day, the light here was in a constant state of change. When the clouds moved overhead, the canyon and the trees become quite dark. But a moment later the cloud would pass on and the sun lit the golden trees so brightly that it was almost impossible to photograph them and keep any light in the background canyon. So I watched and waited and made this exposure when the clouds partially obscured the direct sun, but still let in enough light to brighten the trees and cast soft shadows on the bank of the stream.

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

Canyon Reflections, Utah

November 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the surface of a slot canyon stream, Utah

Among photographers that I know, finding ways to photograph the surface of flowing river and creek water is almost a bit of a game or even an obsession. There is something very appealing about either stopping the motion of the water, or about using longer shutter speeds to let the water blur, revealing the smooth patterns of flowing water and the interesting colorations that we can otherwise easily overlook. People I know seem to have developed their own little idiosyncratic tricks for working with this subject – special shutter speeds, an eye for particular types of reflections, and so forth.

The Utah canyons are a prime place to look for interesting reflection patterns, at least in those canyons in which the water is flowing. This narrow desert canyon contained a small, burbling steam – just enough water to be interesting and dampen boots and pants legs, but not so much as to impede progress up the canyon or make shooting difficult. The trick is to look beyond the apparent surface of the water and instead learn to look for and see the reflections instead. Part of this is looking for interesting flow and ripple patterns, such as the bit of faster moving water moving diagonally across the frame in this image. Another part is to anticipate and then find sources of reflected colored light. This photograph includes several: blue from overhead sky visible above the center of the canyon, purple and burgundy from shaded cliff faces, intense orange reflected from sunlit sandstone, and bright yellow-green from cottonwood and box elder trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: creek

Autumn Leaves, Sand

Aspens and Granite, Autumn

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

Canyon Reflections, Utah

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