Tag Archives: dunes

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

Sand Patterns, Evening Light

April 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Low angle evening sun highlights the patterns of a Death Valley sand dune

On my second day in Death Valley National Park — my first full day of photography there on this trip — I made a long journey down into the southern reaches of the place, driving out on some less used back roads and getting into some places I had not visited before. Death Valley National Park is a huge landscape, and getting from place to place there can become quite a production, especially if you get off of the main paved roadways and get into the back-country on the many unpaved roads. In terms of absolute mileage it probably would not seem like I went all that far, but the actual driving time was many hours. I first headed up a canyon toward an abandoned ranch and mine area, then went far to the south and took an alternative route back to the north, using a long unpaved road though high desert country.

Late in the day I made it back to my basic but functional camp at Stovepipe Wells, took a short break, and decide that it might be good evening for some sand dune photography. The closest dunes to this area are iconic and are perhaps among the two or three best known sites in the park. I don’t necessarily avoid photographing that well-known view, but I’ve seen that so many times that these days I’m a lot more interested in looking for other subjects in the dunes. For the most part I pay almost no attention to the icon here, instead preferring to wander off into lower sections of the dunes. I walk slowly, following my instincts, watching to see what might appear. In the end it could be a large view across vast acreage of dunes, or it could be some tiny subject at my feet. There had been a big wind and dust storm during the past 24 hours, and I found lots of newly made patterns in the sand. I photographed this subject in evening light, when the low angle sun highlighted the patterns of newly made ripples in the sand.

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

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Evening

April 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone creosote among sand dunes in evening light

This photograph is the product of repetitive evening dune wandering, often of a somewhat random nature. Since I had been out and about for many hours earlier on this day, I didn’t get back to camp from my “morning” adventures until close to 4:00 PM. This left me with less time to travel for my evening shoot, so I picked a nearby location with plenty of sand dunes and headed out toward the dunes a bit more than an hour before sunset.

I started with only the most general of plans, but with confidence that there is always plenty to see in such places — small abstract patterns, the larger curves and tonal variations of the sand, tiny subjects including the tracks of animals, the many plants that grow here, and the changing light itself. As I wandered into an out-of-the-way area of these dunes where no one else was photographing I simply slowed down, looked, and followed my instincts and interest. As I moved along I found myself on the top of a small dune and saw some possible views across the ocean of sand toward the far mountains. Looking for compositions in this landscape I spotted this solitary creosote bush in a low area, softly illuminated by a bit of remaining evening light. I moved a bit to position it against a lighter area of sand below the curving shadow that crosses the frame and then made a few exposures in the post-sunset light.

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

Dunes and Mountains, Evening

April 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dunes and rugged desert mountains in evening light, Death Valley National Park

I made this photograph near the end of a very long day in Death Valley National Park. Most of the day was not spent photographing, though I did make some photographs. In keeping with a personal resolution to visit areas of the park that I had not previously seen I had gotten up early and gone to a remove valley that is apparently not visited all that much. My initial idea of visiting the specific place came, as it often does, on what was essentially an accident and a whim. While reading about the park I came across the name of the place, realized that I hadn’t heard that name before, looked it up and figured out where it was, and decided to go there. Since I’m not sharing photographs of the location in this post, the specific details aren’t important, though I’ll share that it was a long drive on rather rough roads — and I finally ended up at a place where the road simply ended in a very quiet little valley high in the desert mountains.

After spending a bit of time alone in that spot it was time to retrace my route back to where I was camped, and by the time I finished the return drive it was almost time to think about photography in evening light. After hours of driving earlier in the day I decided to shoot nearby, and I ended up at these familiar dunes, though perhaps not in the area that most folks go. In fact, during the hour or more that I spent wandering around here with my camera I did not encounter a single other person — though I could see people off in the distance at times. Here I found a spot with an almost clear view across the complex shapes of the dunes, looking toward the rugged mountain landscape along the east side of the valley, and I photographed through the last sunlight and into the early evening.

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

Dunes, Evening

February 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Receding layers of sand dunes in evening light, Death Valley National Park

After a very long day spent driving a lengthy backcountry gravel road through mountainous terrain, I headed back to my camp at Furnace Creek to take care of camp business and grab something to eat. As I usually do in Death Valley, I scheduled my day around a morning subject and an evening subject. Since the morning work had lasted so long, I was thinking of something closer for the evening and, besides, by the time I was ready to shoot it was probably too late to travel very far in the remaining light before the early sunset of this December day. So I decided to travel up the valley a bit to well-known dunes, where I can almost always find something interesting to photograph if I just go looking.

I stopped some distance from the “usual location,” loaded up some basic equipment, and wandered out into a likely looking section of the terrain that would probably not seem all that special to those seeing the area for the first time. (That’s easy to understand, when the impressive and large sand dunes tower above everything else not far from here!) But I know there is a wealth of interesting things to be found even in what appears to be the plainest of the dunes – conjunctions of light and shadow, textures of sand, tracks of small creatures, plants poking through the sand, and more. When I arrived the low sunlight was just about to leave this area, so I worked quickly, trying to take advantage of fleeting moments of shadow and light. As I came to the top of a low dune I saw this complex terrain of dunes and shadows stretching in front of me.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: dunes

Sand Patterns, Evening Light

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Evening

Dunes and Mountains, Evening

Dunes, Evening

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