Tag Archives: curl

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

Dry Mud and Sand

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Dry Mud and Sand
Dry Mud and Sand

Dry Mud and Sand. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 25, 2014.© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dry and curled layer of mud atop red sand in the bottom of a Utah canyon

It might be amusing for “normal people” to encounter a group of photographers in the bottom of a narrow Utah canyon, where the photographers might be found clustered attentively and enthusiastically around… dry mud. That was the case here, as a group of use suddenly halted our progress down a small (though much larger later on) canyon to set up tripods, fit just the right lenses, and spend about a half hour making photographs of mud.

However, as is often the case in landscape photography, it turns out that even dried mud may have a lot more going on than a casual glance would suggest. For people who are not particularly conscious of their “seeing,” it would be easy to walk past and think, “that curled mud is very interesting” and not pay much more attention to it. However, a bit of time spent in these narrow canyon walls teaches you to become alert to the possibility that you might be missing certain things. One bit of visual magic in these canyons happens during the middle part of the day, when the sun directly strikes the red rock canyon walls and reflects this red-saturated light down into the bottom of the canyon. Once you train yourself to see past what your visual system tells you it is seeing (brown mud) you can begin to see the intensely red coloration of this light and even begin to notice that there is a blue component where direct light from the open sky reflects off of some surfaces. And then, you may also find yourself intently focusing on making a photograph of a small patch of dry and cracked mud sitting atop red sand.

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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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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

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Sand and Cracked Mud
Sand and Cracked Mud

Sand and Cracked Mud. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 28, 2012. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach

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Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach - A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.
A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.

Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.

Bits of sea life-like this illustrate one of the great reasons to walk slowly and carefully along the shoreline with eyes wide open. I photographed this section of dried seaweed just as I found it, lying on this stratified bit of sandstone on Weston Beach at Point Lobos. It is hard to imagine how a plant that, I presume, might have been fairly straight underwater, ended up in such a wonderfully twisted shape and to sit on this bit of rock with its own shallow curve.

I was a bit surprised to find this and some similar nearby examples on this beach. I’m used to coming here in the high-wave months of winter, when storm surf can cast all sorts of interesting things far up on the beaches and beyond the usual high-water line. But at this time of year the surf is often a lot calmer, as it was on this day, and I don’t expect to see nearly as much “stuff” washed up.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.