Tag Archives: desert

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

Desert Star Flowers

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Desert Star Flowers
“Desert Star Flowers” — Tiny desert star (monoptilon bellioides) flowers, Death Valley.

When we think of a Death Valley “Superbloom” (the periodic eruption of astonishing numbers of wildflowers in wet years) most of us visualize gravel fans, hillsides, and washes full of impressive masses of wildflower color. In fact, that vision is not far off track. (I have posted and will post photographs of such things.) But you will see a fascinating world of smaller and more subtle flowers underfoot if you stop and look down.

I admit that I did not originally “look down” that much, but I learned from my wife, Patricia Emerson Mitchell, to stop and see these small treasures. The flowers in this photograph are desert (or Mojave) stars. The plants are so small that it is easy to miss them, and the flowers hug close to the ground. We found these while stopping for big fields of desert gold and sand verbena, and once we saw a few of the desert stars we realized that they were everywhere.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky

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Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky
“Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky” — Desert mountains reflected in Lake Manly under morning sky.

I am always looking for simple, minimalist forms in the desert landscape. The lack of vegetation presents the landscape unadorned, and the shapes of the rugged features can acquire an abstract quality. Here the mirrored forms of the Black Mountains form a wedge shape that cuts into a blue landscape of sky and its reflection in Lake Manly.

Water in Lake Manly presents even more possibilities along these lines. In more typical conditions this photograph would be impossible. Instead of filling the frame with the sky and its reflection, the lower third would be a very dry salt flat — interesting, for sure, but entirely different than the water-reflected mirror image of the mountains and sky.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Displacement

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Displacement
“Displacement” — Cracked and broken dry desert mud, Death Valley.

Those who photograph in the desert inevitably end up photographing… mud. I was attracted to many things in this little scene. The fractal patterns themselves, are always fascinating. (Finding just the right patterns is more difficult than it should be!) In this case I also liked the disruption of the expected pattern by the displacement of material from one of the dried cakes of mud. It appears that something has broken the top layer, left shards to the right, and interrupted the overall coloration of the little scene.

I cannot quite say why it is that photographers are so interested in desert mud — but we definitely are. There is something about the patterns themselves, but also the way light plays across these textures. I recall one time walking down an Utah canyon with a half dozen photographer friends. We encountered a little patch of nearly dry mud, and our progress immediately halted as all of us unloaded packs, set up tripods, and went to work for the next half hour… photographing mud.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Panamint Sky

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Panamint Sky
“Panamint Sky” — Morning winter sky above the Panamint Range and Lake Manly.

Lake Manly, the ephemeral lake that appears in Death Valley’s Badwater Basin in unusually wet seasons, is gradually shrinking once again. It was very large in early 2025, and again quite large early this year. It is starting to dry out and it will likely begone soon. For now though, it is still impressive, especially if you stand at its edge early in the morning, and doubly so when clouds fill the sky.

I chose black and white for this photograph of the lake because monochromegives me a great deal of interpretive freedom, in many way s more so than with color. As a starting point, black and white never can claim to be an accurate representation of the world of colors, and this frees us from notions that a photograph must always aspire to look like what we saw. In this case, monochrome allows me to draw attention to this remarkable winter desert sky.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.