Tag Archives: escalante

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

Dry Mud and Sand

November 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dry and curled layer of mud atop red sand in the bottom of a Utah canyon

It might be amusing for “normal people” to encounter a group of photographers in the bottom of a narrow Utah canyon, where the photographers might be found clustered attentively and enthusiastically around… dry mud. That was the case here, as a group of use suddenly halted our progress down a small (though much larger later on) canyon to set up tripods, fit just the right lenses, and spend about a half hour making photographs of mud.

However, as is often the case in landscape photography, it turns out that even dried mud may have a lot more going on than a casual glance would suggest. For people who are not particularly conscious of their “seeing,” it would be easy to walk past and think, “that curled mud is very interesting” and not pay much more attention to it. However, a bit of time spent in these narrow canyon walls teaches you to become alert to the possibility that you might be missing certain things. One bit of visual magic in these canyons happens during the middle part of the day, when the sun directly strikes the red rock canyon walls and reflects this red-saturated light down into the bottom of the canyon. Once you train yourself to see past what your visual system tells you it is seeing (brown mud) you can begin to see the intensely red coloration of this light and even begin to notice that there is a blue component where direct light from the open sky reflects off of some surfaces. And then, you may also find yourself intently focusing on making a photograph of a small patch of dry and cracked mud sitting atop red sand.

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

Cottonwood, Red Rock Canyon

November 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A fall color-tinged cottonwood tree grows in the depths of a red rock canyon, Utah

It is time to begin the Utah posts — I already have perhaps a month of photographs to share. (I still have more photographs from my late-summer back-country Yosemite shoot in the queue, but they can wait for a bit.) Utah, especially the southwest portion that I have visited frequently during the past few years, is an intriguing place for this California photographer. After decades of happily photographing my increasingly familiar home territory, it has been a special experience to work in a place where almost everything is new to me. I’ve gone there will few specific expectations, and I’ve made a point of not seeking out the familiar icons — though I have stumbled onto a few of them. (Yes, I do have a photograph of the Watchman. ;-) Compared to the gray tones of California granite, the red rock country of the Southwest is absolutely wild. Combine that rock with intense colors of green plants, yellow/gold fall foliage, blue sky and the effect is very different from what I’m used to shooting.

On my recent visit I managed to get into a number of canyons and gulches, which are perhaps the most magical of Utah places. In many cases, including the canyon where I made this photograph, the visit often begins in a place that looks nothing like this canyon scene — some dry, shallow wash or perhaps out on the flatlands above the canyon, where the air is dry and warm. I follow a path downstream and soon the wash becomes deeper and the walls rockier, and before long these walls rise to become cliffs and the world outside and above disappears, replaced by cool and moist air and water in the bottom of the echoing canyon. Trees and brush grow here, and sometimes you are caught up short when you encounter the sacred traces of people who made this world their home centuries ago. This photograph was made in such a canyon. At a stream crossing I made an almost random decision to climb up onto a higher route around a bend in the stream rather than following the the stream along the bottom of the canyon. As I crossed the slightly higher area I looked down into this world of red rock where a solitary cottonwood tree grows against the curving patterns of the rock.

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

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

December 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A single bare tree stands against a massive sandstone cliff

This photograph had fallen by the wayside in the wake of a 2012 autumn photography trip to Utah with a group of friend. The three of us photographed mostly in various areas of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and also briefly hit Zion on the way to and from the main destinations. As happens all too frequently, after working my way through almost all the photographs from that trip other tasks intruded and I moved on. A week ago one of my shooting partners emailed me to ask if I had a photograph of him that he could use for a newsletter. I recalled that I had one of him set up next to a bit of sandstone wall along the Escalante River, and while looking for it I ended up going back through a set of RAW files shot that day.

Now, over a year later, my specific memory of this photograph is a bit fuzzy. I recall for sure that we spent the day – a cold and windy one – in a big canyon with steep sandstone walls and a meandering stream lined with cottonwood trees and other autumn vegetation, some of which had lost virtually all of its foliage. This tree was one of those almost bare ones, and growing up against the beautiful bit of sandstone cliff its form echoed that of a nearby crack in the rock.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: escalante

Dry Mud and Sand

Cottonwood, Red Rock Canyon

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

Sand and Cracked Mud

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