Tag Archives: evening

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light

July 18, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Cathedral Range and the Dana Fork fork of the Tuolumne River

One of the great pleasures of the Sierra — and other places, for that matter — is “aimless wandering,” just heading out into a landscape with no specific goal in mind, but simply to move slowly and quietly and find what there is to see. This was an evening for such things, so I went to a familiar place a few hours before the end of the day and just walked off slowly into the landscape, meandering along the boundary between meadow and forest, stopping frequently to observe. Truth be told, I probably spent more time standing still than walking.

Perhaps 45 minutes before sunset I realized that some unusual “sky action” was about to take place above my location, and my meandering took on a clearer since of direction. I began to work my way back toward my starting point, a location from which I envisioned photographs of the sky and foreground landscape. But even this more purposeful walking was slow, and along the way I stopped to photograph this bend in the river, with a distant granite ridge above the meadow and forest.

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

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

Dust Storm, Dunes, Evening Light

June 25, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dust storm rages above sand dunes at the end of the day, Death Valley National Park

This was a wild evening, featuring an apocalyptic combination of tremendously strong winds, huge clouds of blowing sand and dust, periodic downpours of rain, and light that changed constantly from ominous and dark to luminous clouds backlit by sun to threads of virgo, and more. I had never seen quite this combination of conditions in Death Valley at one time.

Photography was quite challenging. Because sunset was approaching (and I continued to photograph into the dusk), it was often quite dark. The screaming winds made it virtually impossible to shoot from the tripod, so I was mostly reduced to bracing my camera against the window frame of my vehicle and working with the camera handheld. In the rough conditions I was forced to work from a distance with a long lens, since photographing inside the windblown clouds of dust and sand was not a good idea. Here the clouds and the dust above the sand dunes momentarily thinned, creating a backlit glow from the low angle sun about to drop behind mountains to the west.

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

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

Evening Storms

June 24, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening rain clouds and dust storm above the Panamint Mountains, Death Valley National Park

This was a wild evening in Death Valley. While the clouds were generally moving toward clearing, we first saw extreme weather of several types. Down close to the ground there were big, billowing clouds of sand and dust being lofted above the Valley floor. High above that wildness huge weather front clouds built above desert mountains.

In the evening I decided to go our for one more photographic chase, even though the weather hardly seemed conducive to photography. In this case I resorted to an approach that I’ve used before in storms like this one, namely to put on the long focal length lens and shoot into the maelstrom from a distance. It this case, two storms were present at once: While high winds whipped up the sand and dust storm closer to the ground, overhead the monumental clouds of a rain storm towered over the desert mountains.

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

Dunes and Mountains, Twilight

June 20, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sand dunes and desert mountains in twilight, Death Valley National Park

Arriving in Death Valley earlier in the day, we had visited some canyon country that is a bit off the beaten path and then headed back to our home base in the park for the next few days. We got settled in, had some dinner, and headed out to make some photographs, deciding that it would be best on this first evening to photograph nearby.

We made it to an area along the periphery of the dunes before sunset and then continued to photograph during the evening light transition from warm pre-sunset color to the post-sunset blue hour light. Here there was still a bit of a glow from the west, but the sun had already dropped below the Cottonwood mountains, and the light was soft as we finished photographing in the evening stillness.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: evening

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light

Evening Storms

Dunes and Mountains, Twilight

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