Tag Archives: evening

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Rock Panorama

March 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening glow on red rock landscape, Utah

I acknowledge that this color is pretty wild. This is partly a result of the way the camera sees in diminishing twilight, with colors saturating in surprising ways. The photograph was among the last couple I made on this evening when we continued photographing so late that it was about to become tricky finding our way back down in the near darkness. It is also the result of wild color in the sky — a bit of which you can see on the clouds in the upper portion of the frame — that fell on rock that is already quite red.

We had spent perhaps a couple of hours photographing in this terrain, focusing on the sensuous shapes of the curved sandstone, the odd cottonwood tree with fall color leaves, and bits of the surrounding landscape. It was a productive evening, working a group of six of us exploring, at times together, and times in smaller sub-groups, and sometimes alone. I didn’t really want to stop, since this isn’t the kind of location that I can easily return to — but eventually the light faded and our work was done for the day.

Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

March 15, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn aspen trees at the end of a meadow on the Kaibab Plateau

Back in the early autumn of 2014 I headed off to southern Utah for some significant time photographing — first on my own in the area around Kanab and points a bit east of there, then up to Capitol Reef to meet a friend for a few days, then out into a relatively off-the-grid area south of Escalante to photograph with another group of photographers, with a quick stop after that in the town of Boulder, and then west to Zion to meet family members for a few days. Whew! On my first day in Utah I ended up at a motel in Kanab, where I settled in by late afternoon. I originally figured it would be too late for photography, but I found myself with a few hours late in the day and no plans made. I looked at a map and saw the road heading south toward the north rim of Grand Canyon (where I had never been before — it is a long story) and thought, “what the heck, I’ll go to Grand Canyon!”)

I headed out of Kanab with a very amorphous plan to follow the road south, perhaps getting to the rim by sunset if I was lucky. I crossed the valley and began the climb up to the Kaibab plateau where, to my surprise, I found late season aspens along mountain meadows that still had some color. In the dusk light I stopped — I couldn’t help myself! — and made a few photographs of these slender, tall, and straight trees against the backdrop of bare aspens and the conifer forest beyond. (I eventually did get to the rim… but it was already deep in dusk when I arrived.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: evening

Sand Patterns, Evening Light

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Evening

Red Rock Panorama

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

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