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

Dunes and Mountains

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Dunes and Mountains
Low dunes and the base of Tucki Mountain in evening light

Dunes and Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low dunes and the base of Tucki Mountain in evening light

This is a different interpretation of a photograph that I have previously posted. Here I have simply tried a different crop, one that eliminates some areas of from the top and bottom of the earlier photograph in order to focus more on the horizontal sweep of the shallow dunes and the more distant wash sloping up to the base of gigantic Tucki Mountain, here in nearly the last light of the evening.

I think that when we are in this place, one of the most iconic in Death Valley National Park, our attention is more likely to be drawn to the tallest dunes, which are located more or less behind me at this camera position. But there is much else to see here, ranging from the intimate landscape of ripple sand and small plants to the rugged slopes of Tucki Mountain just to the south, and including the many long views across the huge spaces of the valley. Here I had been mostly photographing an expanse of dunes leading off toward the northeast, when I turned around to see this view of the edge of the sand, with low dunes curving toward the sparse plant life at their edge.

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

Dunes and Mountains

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Dunes and Mountains
Dunes and Mountains

Dunes and Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low dunes and the base of Tucki Mountain in evening light

At the end of my first full day photographing Death Valley this spring I headed out onto the nearby sand dunes to look for whatever might show up in the evening light. I was close to one of the most iconic dunes in the park, but I found an out-of-the-way spot far enough away from that landmark that I had this area of the dunes completely to myself. Interesting things happen to the light and colors on the sand dunes during the short period of time leading up to sunset and for a short time afterwards. The dunes pick up low angle light that makes the textures of the dunes more visible and the light changes colors — first going toward warmer colors before the sunset, and gradually transitioning toward softer and more blue tones shortly after the sun goes down.

At first I wandered straight out into the dunes — well, perhaps not quite straight, as I tend to follow my instincts and an observer might think that my path looked a bit aimless. At one point I found some higher dunes from which I could see a bit farther of toward the northeast and from which I could look down on the complex patterns of the sand. After photographing there I turned back toward the direction from which I had come, and I saw this section of lower dunes dropping toward the edge of the sand, with the background of the lower folds of Tucki Mountain in late light.

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.
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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Fire Escape Ladder, Brick Building

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Fire Escape Ladder, Brick Building
Fire Escape Ladder, Brick Building

Fire Escape Ladder, Brick Building. New York, New York. August 24, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

On the final morning of our August (2011) visit to New York City, we took the subway down toward the lower end of the island to meet our son – the plan being to walk though Soho and (I think) the West Village, ending up at a gallery in Chelsea. After taking care of the most pressing bit of initial business – coffee – we wandered on through Soho… and I think this photograph was made there.

New Yorkers undoubtedly know exactly is going on with this light, but for the rest of the world… the morning sun was passing through a relatively narrow gap between buildings to strike this brick wall and partially pick off this green emergency exit zigzagging down the front of this building. In a lot of ways, this isn’t totally different from shooting natural landscapes – go out early, look for interesting subjects, find good light, make photographs. It isn’t totally the same – duh! – either. Not only can you walk here from coffee, but we (my son and I) shot without tripods, and I stuck to a single 50mm prime to keep things simple.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range

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Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range
Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range

Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Post-sunset light from bright red clouds casts a reddish glow on the Amargosa Range, Death Valley Buttes, and the Kit Fox Hills.

I think this might be the second in what I could call the “impossible color” series from my late-March trip to Death Valley. (The previous image was a photograph of a wash/alluvial fan at the base of Tucki Mountain, photographed on the same evening.) The lurid and unreal colors are not the result of post-processing gone horribly wrong – the light was actually this color for a short period. The sun had already gone down behind the Cottonwood Mountains to the west of my shooting location in the middle of Death Valley not far from Stovepipe Wells. It had been an interesting sunset with the usual increase in warm colors and some attractive clouds in the sky.

What happened next was something that is probably familiar to those who have done a lot of landscape photography, though they recognize that it is not something that you can quite predict. After the sun had set and dusk was coming on, some final light from far to the west, where the sun had probably already dropped just below the horizon, began to strike high clouds above Death Valley. (I could sort of see this coming, since I had noticed increasing color in the sky further to the east.) As this happened, these clouds began to glow with an intense red color that was mixed with the normal bluish tones of dusk light and surface features took on this purple/red glow for just a brief moment before the light faded.

(Those who look very carefully may notice that the sky above and to the east of the mountains is a lot bluer than the mountains themselves. The color had already left the sky to the east, and at this point was coming from the sky directly overhead and to my west.)

I’m still trying to sort out the complex geology of this area and the ways that features are named. The larger range containing these peaks is called the Amargosa Range, though it encompasses many smaller named sub-ranges – I think these might be part of the Grapevine Mountains, roughly in the neighborhood of Thimble and Corkscrew Peaks. A dark peak in front of the main range at the very far right may be part of Death Valley Buttes, and the banded foreground hills are sometimes called the “Kit Fox Hills.”

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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.