Tag Archives: detail

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

Dunes, Soft Light

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Dunes, Soft Light
Details of sand dunes in soft evening light, Death Valley Naitonal Park.

Dunes, Soft Light. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Details of sand dunes in soft evening light, Death Valley Naitonal Park.

Sand dunes are fascinating subjects, both for their appearance as part of the larger landscape and because they contain infinite varieties of smaller subjects, textures, colors, and variations in light. I made a wild guess recently that I’ve probably been to Death Valley perhaps twenty-five times. You’d think that I might start to tire of the dunes or run out of things to photograph there… but there’s no sign of this happening.

We went to these dunes late in the day and had them entirely to ourselves. The light was challenging, as clouds were building to the west. As the clouds moved the light increased and decreased, but overall it remained quite soft. But this just provided another variation on how we can photograph this subject, and the soft light reveals some subtle details that can get lost in brighter conditions. I made some post-processing choices here that highlight the variations in light and the soft forms of the dunes.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Fractalscape

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Fractalscape
Complex and highly detailed erosion patterns combine with pastel colors in a Death Valley landscape.

Fractalscape. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Complex and highly detailed erosion patterns combine with pastel colors in a Death Valley landscape.

I could probably write a chapter about this photograph, including ideas about color, geology, light, figuring out how to “see” particular places, and more. I’ll keep it simple though, and only briefly mention a few things. This is a photograph from an area of Death Valley that I had previously written off as being — wait for it! — “uninteresting.” This is not the first time that I’ve had to eat my words about such evaluations after going back and realizing that the problem wasn’t the landscape — it was me!

The light was rather special — the “first light” of early morning, with its warm tones, but it was also softened and diffused by high clouds. This briefly revealed some unusual pastel colors in the formations They contrasted with the blue tones in the shadows. The scene also reveals the highly detailed and “fractal” nature of landscapes like this, where the bigger elements can be seen as larger versions of the smallest details.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature

Succulent Leaves, Detail

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Succulent Leaves, Detail
Close up view of the patterns of succulent plant leaf edges.

Succulent Leaves, Detail. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Close up view of the patterns of succulent plant leaf edges.

Any time I end up in some sort of garden I seem to end up making at least a few photographs of the plants, often focusing on the shapes, lines, curves, textures and colors. In other words, most often I don’t make photographs that really show the plants in a botanically useful way, instead preferring to see them as essentially abstractions. One advantage of this approach, at least from my point of view, is that I don’t feel particularly limited to presenting an objectively accurate rendition of the subject, and I can instead choose to “see” the subject almost any way I want.

If I recall correctly, I made this photograph during a visit to Northern California a couple of years ago — the last time we visited the state and national redwood parks up there prior to this year. We stopped along the way up there and spent a night or two not far from Fort Bragg, where there is a lovely botanical garden. We took time out from the landscape photography to spend a few hours wandering there — mostly bent over close to the ground to photograph small things!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Sandstone Detail

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Sandstone Detail
Detail of a section of a Utah sandstone rock face.

Sandstone Detail. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a section of a Utah sandstone rock face.

Remarkable things happen to the light deep down in the recesses of narrow sandstone canyons. The light is rarely direct, more often bouncing many times among red canyon walls. As it does, it softens, diffuses, and picks up the colors of the red rock. At the same time this landscape is open to a band of blue sky — what I think of as a giant blue light panel — and this color becomes part of the mix, though this light can follow a more direct path and fill in shadows. When you stop to consider what it really looks like, it almost seems unreal.

We were deep in such a canyon, spending a day heading deeper and deeper into it as it cut into the landscape. By the point at which I made this photograph, that band of blue sky was increasingly narrow and we encountered less and less direct sunlight.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.