Tag Archives: dunes

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

Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains

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Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains
Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains

Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 20, 2010. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Mesquite Dunes and the Cottonwood Mountains late on a hazy afternoon, Death Valley National Park, California

The Mesquite Dunes are a well-known icon of Death Valley and are often photographed in the early morning or around sunset. I made this photograph at a somewhat different time – late in the afternoon but well before the golden hour light of evening. The sun was still high enough to illuminate the tops of the dunes and even the sides away from the sun, and the afternoon haze made the atmosphere blue and obscured the rugged features of the Cottonwood Mountains beyond the dunes and across the Valley.

If you look closely enough, you can find a number of features that characterize this area of the valley. The foreground flats are “filled” with plants that grow a good distance apart from one another, apparently due to the limited water. The edge of the dunes spills over slightly into the gravelly flat but then rises quite high. Beyond the dunes, and faintly seen through the haze, a giant alluvial fan slants down from higher mountains to the left. (It sometimes surprises visitors to see how much the terrain in this very dry place has been shaped by water.) Beyond the sloping fan, the rugged Cottonwood Mountains, part of the Panamint Range, begin to rise to quite high peaks.

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

Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise

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Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise - Dawn light on Balanced Rock and cliff face, Arches National Park
Dawn light on Balanced Rock and cliff face, Arches National Park

Balanced Rock and Cliff, Sunrise. Arches National Park, Utah. October 10, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light on Balanced Rock and cliff face, Arches National Park

When I first visited Utah for photography, only in April of this year, I think that Arches National Park probably provoked the most serious “wow” response from me. I loved each of the parks we visited in different way, but the first-impression of Arches was, for me, stunning. It probably helped that I had more or less intentionally done no research on the place before our arrival. It also helped that my first view of the park was on a spontaneous golden-hour drive into the park from Moab late in the day, when we found ourselves with more time after arriving than we had planned on. I was stunned to see what seem to be essentially impossible formations throughout the park – the arches themselves, of course, but also the tall thin towers, long and narrow fins of sandstone, large rocks balancing on pedestals, and more.

On the second visit, this fall, I was still impressed by these amazing formation, but I also began to look past them a bit more and start to see a few of the subtle things that are there as well, and to begin to understand a few of the patterns of the place – where and when certain types of special light or atmosphere might occur. On this morning I had returned to re-shoot something that had not worked out quite the way I planned on the previous visit. Having completed that task, we moved on up the road, looking for other opportunities, of which there were many. Here, as we passed one of the large towers in the Courthouse area, I saw a photograph that juxtaposed several things: the silhouetted shape of the balanced rock on the far ridge, the brilliant morning sidelight on the nearby sandstone tower, and the early morning sun slanting across the petrified dunes area, picking up the higher points on the terrain.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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

Eureka Valley, Twilight

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Eureka Valley, Twilight - Twilight on plants and sand flats in Eureka Valley, Death Valley National Park.
Twilight on plants and sand flats in Eureka Valley, Death Valley National Park.

Eureka Valley, Twilight. Death Valley National Park, California. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Twilight on plants and sand flats near the edge of the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Some might accuse me of being a bit of a contrarian with this photograph, I suppose. I made it at the base of the some very spectacular sand dunes, purportedly the tallest sand dunes in the USA – but I have the dunes to my back and the photograph doesn’t show them at all. This is also an area with very interesting and somewhat dramatic surrounding hills and ridges, but I intentionally cut the upper border of the photograph so as to not include these ridges or the sky. Speaking of the sky, I shot this just after sunset, when sky color is at its peak… but no sky here! And in a time when pumped up, saturated photographs are very common… this one goes with a very different palette, one that includes a lot of tones that are basically tan, along with some bluish color on the far mountains.

I hope that some who know places like this might understand. This is a very desolate place, and I wanted to just accept and try to photograph that. And in the early evening, when the sun has dropped behind the western hills, the blue-tone light comes on and the contrast lowers, and the colors drain from the landscape. In addition, it was cold! For me, the coloration of this scene suggests that aspect of the scene, which is perhaps not what first comes to mind when we see desert sand and plants.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.

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

Photographer, Sand Dunes, Evening

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Photographer, Transverse Dunes, Evening - A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.
A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

Photographer, Sand Dunes, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

This is a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” photograph – and, yes, there really is a photographer in this scene. There is not much to give you an accurate sense of the scale of the components of this scene, and there are even a few details that might throw you off. Hint: That bush near the upper left is a lot larger than you might imagine. If you look closely, I’m pretty certain that you can spot the photographer, but I won’t spoil the fun by telling you where to look.

These dunes extend over a large areas in Death Valley National Park, and I’ve come to find some of the smaller dunes of the park to present interesting relief among the closely spaced ripples and waves of sand, and late-day color variations that only get better after sunset. To make this photograph I used a long lens and found a vantage point that was elevated above the sand.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.