Tag Archives: death

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Nature

Evening Rain and Sandstorm

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Evening Rain and Sandstorm
Evening rain and sandstorm as sun illuminates the Grapevine Mountains

Evening Rain and Sandstorm. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening rain and sandstorm as sun illuminates the Grapevine Mountains

During the spring season in Death Valley National Park almost anything can happen. It can be 90 degrees or higher, or it might snow. Days may be pleasant to sunny, or it could be overcast with huge winds and dust storms or rain. We just spent the better part of five days there, and I think I saw as great a range of conditions as I’ve encountered before. The second evening was particularly remarkable. We were up in Panamint Mountains when we first noticed the tell-tale haze of dust storms, and by the time we returned to the Valley it was so windy that there was nothing to do but hunker down and wait it out. Near sunset the winds began to abate a bit and we ventured outside. I heard a few claps of thunder and it began to rain huge drops. Later we discovered that it had snowed on the highest peaks.

A few days later the conditions were supposed to be more benign. We spend early morning hours photographing out on the dunes, then did a midday and afternoon hike up a beautiful canyon. Exiting the canyon we were surprised to see dust beginning to rise again, since the forecast had called for very light winds. By the time we got back to Stovepipe Wells the winds were howling, light rain was falling, and dust filled the atmosphere. A bit later things calmed down and I decided to make a quick evening trip to a nearby high point from which I could get an overview of the valley. Arriving there I could see a wild combination of dramatic light on up-valley mountains, rain falling on their summits, and the dust storm growing below. Within minutes of making this photograph the wind began to howl and the dust enveloped my position and I retreated once more.

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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Commentary, Ideas, Morning Musings, Not Photography

Social Media and the Death of the Web (Morning Musings 9/27/14)

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Dan Mitchell 1977 Website Screenshot
Dan Mitchell 1977 Website Screenshot *

How many of us have considered the ways in which popular social media services — which admittedly are hugely appealing in many ways  — are doing an effective job of killing the world wide web and undoing the early promise that it offered of direct and open access, along with visibility proportionate to quality, and critical disintermediation?

A few years back there was this astonishing, exciting, powerful, accessible thing called the world wide web, on which virtually anyone could share their story, their creative work, their business — and we saw the beginnings of the great disintermediation as boundaries were broken and the middlemen who had stood between content producers and consumers began to disappear. This was a world filled with promise. Those who produced valuable and interesting content (as differentiated from those who simply channeled it) could connect directly with a world of people who found that content compelling, and those looking for content could easily find it and follow it. Word got around, and it did so fairly directly, with little or no intermediation by those who had controlled traditional media.

Social media applications are seductive things, especially during their start-up phase, when the typical approach has involved giving away (or at least appearing to give away) a great deal of access by means of what seem like very open platforms. In fact, many who jumped onto these platforms early on did manage to leverage their initial power to their advantage. However, virtually without exception, these applications have morphed in directions that do not enable our own control over what we see and who we connect to, but which instead take control out of our hands and begin to determine for us what we will see, most often based on generating advertising revenue — a old model that takes us back to (to coin a term) nondisintermediation. Continue reading Social Media and the Death of the Web (Morning Musings 9/27/14) →

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

Devils Cornfield, Morning

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Devils Cornfield, Morning
Devils Cornfield, Morning

Devils Cornfield, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on Devils Cornfield and receding ridges, Death Valley National Park

I’m a fan of shooting in the very early morning – what photographer isn’t? – and of shooting directly into the brilliant light of the rising sun, especially when that light shines through an atmosphere containing haze or dust. These conditions appeal to me in a variety of ways. The inclusion of this haze emphasizes the effect of atmospheric recession, and sometimes the most distant elements of the scene can fade to near invisibility as the atmosphere lowers the color saturation and contrast of the scene. Shadows, especially if bit of detail can be retained, can produce dramatic contrasts, and light glancing across the edges of features such as plants can be intensely colorful.

This photograph includes features of a scene that is easily accessible but perhaps one that people don’t often spend much time considering, especially at this time of day. Most photographs of the area that I see are made in fairly normal daytime light or perhaps in the warm and clear light of the evening golden hour. Here I found a slightly elevated camera position and aimed across the tops of clumps of grasses, a small nearby hill, and a succession of higher and more distant ridges leading away toward the mountains along the east side of the valley.

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

Eroded Desert Canyon Walls

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Eroded Desert Canyon Walls
Eroded Desert Canyon Walls

Eroded Desert Canyon Walls. Death Valley National Park, California. April 5, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The eroded rock strata of the walls of a narrow desert canyon, Death Valley National Park

I made this photograph in a place that I most certainly would not want to visit on the day that I am posting this! Back in early April this popular hike up a narrow canyon was relatively comfortable on a day when the temperature might have made it to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. By now, that would be considered to be a “cool” day, since temperatures in these “warm” months frequently go well over 100 degrees. Some people choose to visit Death Valley in those awful conditions, but I’ll take the late fall through early spring season any time!

In Death Valley, more so than in just about any other area below timberline, the geology of the place is laid open for us to see clearly. Things do grow there, but sparsely and rarely beyond a height that might be measured in inches. The primary impression is of rock – monumental mountains of rock, vast washes over which floods have spread broken up rock and gravel, and the valley floors which may range from gravel to sand – but are still, ultimately, rock. Very little grows in this canyon aside from a few tiny plants peeking out of the odd crack or cowering in bits of shade, so here the erosion features and the underlying rock strata are easy to see. As I came to this point in the canyon, the wall was mostly still in shadows filled by reflected light, with just a bit of direct sunlight rimming the edges of some of the rocks.

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.