Tag Archives: desert

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

Titus Canyon Road

February 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon Road descents into upper Titanothere Canyon before climbing to Red Pass

Early December is a fine time to be in Death Valley National Park, and I managed to spend five days there this past December. The weather is cooler this time of year – in fact, temperatures dropped into the upper twenties in the Valley during my visit and well down into the teens in some of the upper elevations that I visited during the pre-dawn hours. Although seasoned Death Valley visitors prefer to visit during the cooler months, things seem much quieter than a few months later in the spring. In fact, I almost had the entire Stovepipe Wells campground to myself on my first night!

The relative solitude extended to this day, on which I drove over the Amargosa Range via Titus Canyon Road, the rough back-country one-way route between the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley itself. I know this route fairly well, having been over it a number of times. I always start in the morning, and this trip was no exception – I was well out on to the route when the sun came up. Often I just take a few hours for the trip, stopping at a few key locations. But recently I have thought more about how I might photograph some of these places that I used to simply drive through, and on this visit I slowed way down and devoted almost the entire day to this area. The location in this photograph is an example of the sort of area that I might have just passed through in the past. Here the road traverses the upper reaches of a very large canyon that eventually spills out into Death Valley far below. The location from which I made the photograph marks the high point on the route, and I always stop there – but on some previous visits I have just regarded the terrain as being empty. It isn’t, and I’m learning to see it more clearly. Here the gravel road drops down from the previous ridge, winding through the rough and dry landscape to the bottom of the canyon and its dry stream bed before climbing steeply up to my camera position.

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

Erosion Patterns

January 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Deeply furrowed erosion patterns in early morning light, Death Valley National Park

I spent some time photographing Death Valley National Park in mid-December, during a very cold time of the year. It is not unusual for the place to be surprisingly cold in the middle of winter, but this was a period of exceptional cold and it got down to 25 degrees in the Valley and much colder in some of the places I visited in the surrounding desert mountains. I had arrived the evening before I made this photograph, and a sequence of events on the drive it suggest an inauspicious beginning to this visit. I usually come in through Ridgecrest and then up through Trona. I usually drive almost straight through to Ridgecrest and then take a long, late lunch break there – getting my last espresso until I come back out of the park, filling up the gas tank, and so forth. I killed pretty close to an hour taking care of these odds and ends, and then started out of town toward Trona.

Less than a mile up the road I ran into a flashing warning sign announcing that this entrance to the park was closed! This necessitated a bit of backtracking and then travel north up US 395 to then head east toward the park on highway 190. I had originally planned to arrive by mid-afternoon, set up camp, and then photograph in the evening… but by the time I finished all of this driving it was dark when I arrived and I simply pulled into the campground and slept in my car. Early the next morning, feeling just a bit disconnected, I drove over towards 20 Mule Team Canyon where I knew I should be able to find some nice morning light. In fact I did, and I soon found this beautiful miniature landscape of nearly parallel gullies in a hillside along the canyon. As the first light hit the edges off the ridges between the gullies I found a composition that mostly filled the frame with them. I finished shooting here and moved on. At my next location, I finally must have engaged my brain, and I checked the camera to find that it had been left on ISO 3200 from my previous work photographing musicians backstage at a concert in natural light. Groan! So this photograph is one that I managed to salvage from that little escapade… and I’m grateful for the relatively good performance of modern cameras… even when the operator is not paying attention!

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

Dune Forms, Evening

January 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shadows from evening light slanting across curved dune forms, Death Valley National Park

Having photographed here many times, I know these and other dunes of Death Valley fairly well – well enough at this point to have some ideas about where and when to photograph them and to be less interested in the more familiar views. I had spent the majority of the day, starting well before sunrise, exploring and photographing an entirely different area of the park, but as I did so I had formed a general plan to head to the dunes at the end of the day and photograph them in evening light. I had a bit of time after finishing with the first subject, so I headed back to camp to hang out a bit.

I may have hung out just a bit too long! My plans for the dunes were not exactly fixed, though I knew that I wanted to investigate a less visited area of lower dunes away from the main area and that I wanted to be out there shortly before sunset – to shoot the sunset light and then to continue shooting right on past sunset and into the beautiful and subtle dusk light. By the time I got to the dunes, I figured out that the winter sun sets a bit earlier than I had realized, and I had to hurry out to my shooting area. Although I did not have a specific idea of what I would shoot, I had some general ideas involving slanting light, shadows, curving shapes, texture of sand, and possibly some vegetation. But once on the scene I had to work extremely quickly, as the long shadows of the low angle sun moved quickly across the sand, and a new composite of light and shadow would appear only to move and then disappear in a matter of seconds or perhaps a minute or two. Within moments of making this photograph, the last warm sun on the dunes was gone, and I was left with the cold post-sunset light.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

January 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Desert sunrise reflected on the surface of a metal trailer, Death Valley National Park

On my final day in Death Valley this past December I rose early to go re-photograph a location that I had shot much earlier in the week… and fouled up some exposures when I failed to pay attention to camera settings. Yes, it happens! I had a long homeward drive ahead of me on this day, but I knew that I had enough time to get back to this spot and make amends before leaving. Fortunately, the location in question was not terribly far from where I was camped, and instead of what can sometimes be a half hour, one, or longer drive to sunrise location… this time it was maybe 10 minutes. So I got to sleep in… until there was actually a tiny bit of light in the sky! I awoke, dressed in the tent, and went to my car to drive to my destination as the light was beginning to glow in the east.

As I left the campground I was already in “photographer mode,” but probably mostly so that I could anticipate what light conditions I might be working with a bit later – but I was focused enough to catch a quick glimpse of this interesting reflection on the side of a metal walled travel trailer along the route out of the campground. It may sound odd, but the shiny metal surfaces, the ambient blue pre-sunrise light, and the reflections of a few reddish clouds along the eastern skyline caught my attention. I stopped. I backed up. I opened the window of my car. I made a few photographs of the trailer, which most likely contained sleeping campers who would miss this lovely sunrise.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: desert

Titus Canyon Road

Erosion Patterns

Dune Forms, Evening

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

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