Tag Archives: formation

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

September 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park.

I made this photograph fairly early in the morning at the Park Avenue area of Arches National Park. While morning might was hitting the walls behind my camera position, the walls in front of me were still in fairly deep shade. However, as the sun rose, its light began to come over the tops of these tall sandstone walls and spill down into the canyon. As the morning wore on, the light/shadow line began to move back closer to this wall, first illuminating the ledge and the fallen rocks in holds and then beginning to highlight edges of some of the cracks in the wall itself.

The Park Avenue area seems like one of the most accessible areas of this park being only a short distance inside the park boundaries and being very close to the roadway. The area is essentially a canyon between two nearly parallel walls of sandstone, often topped with remarkable towers and other features as the canyon descends toward where it opens up into sage brush country below. At this particular hour of this particular morning, as wonderful as that scene was, the light shooting down the canyon was only so-so, so I looked around, put on a long lens, and photographed smaller vignettes of the landscape such as this one.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Towers, Evening Clouds

May 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dissipating evening clouds above sandstone formations, Arches National Park, Utah.

On our first early April evening in Arches National Park, we ended up at what the NPS map calls the “Windows Section.” This is an area of long sandstone ridges and many arches, including North and South Windows, Turret Arch and more. We really didn’t quite know where we were going, but we could tell that the day was waning and that we needed to find a spot to shoot the evening light – and this are was close and seemed to hold some potential. We drove the end of the road, quickly unloaded, and headed off to see what we could find.

I started by going back down the road a ways to photograph more open terrain to the west along with a row of sandstone features running to the north. I quickly figured out – duh! – that is was very windy! This isn’t a major problem as long as the light is good, but I knew that it was going to be a challenge as the diminishing light eventually called for longer exposures. I then wandered up toward Turret Arch and the South Window, looking for likely compositions. I made a few initial exposures before the sun dropped below the horizon, the light soon began to fade to that wonderful period just after sunset when everything can take on a sort of rich glow when the conditions are just right. Some dissipating clouds were adding to the glow and making the light and the sky more interesting… but that wind wasn’t diminishing a bit! Even with a solid tripod and head, when using a somewhat large lens and long exposures there will be issues with camera stability. This limited my range of motion a bit, as finding spots that provided some shelter from the strongest gusts became a consideration along with the usual compositional issues. With that in mind, I ended up mostly foregoing the major features here and instead turned my attention to the sky and to a cluster of sandstone formations to the east of the main arches… and that is what you see in this photograph.

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

Mustard Hills

January 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Evening light on the Mustard Hills, Death Valley National Park.

This photograph was made in a fairly accessible and “civilized” part of Death Valley not far from Furnace Creek and the old Harmony Borax Works. I have passed these hills many times, barely stopping aside from a time or two when I did a little loop drive while on my way to some other place. I did photograph in the area once before and even got one or two interesting photographs.

This time I decided to use one of the small, rounded hills as a overlook for shooting some distant shots of various portions of the Valley near sunset. By walking away from the highway, one can end up on top of any number of hills which happily show little evidence of being visited even though they are relatively accessible. I first did a bit of investigation to find the “right” hill, then hiked back to my car to pick up my camera, tripod, and bag of gear. Once I got back to the top of the hill, the shadows of the Panamint Range were already well across the main Valley and moving east quickly. I made a few photographs of the shaded valley and the lower slopes of the range, and then I turned my attention to the nearby yellow-tinted hills, looking for interesting near/far juxtapositions. I found this one literally seconds before the oncoming shadow of the Panamints arrived – in fact, it is beginning to diminish the foreground light in this shot, and in the one I made a few seconds later the light is greatly diminished.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Squall, South Tufa

August 1, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Thunderhead builds above Mono Lake — “Morning Squall, South Tufa” — The shoreline of Mono Lake as a morning squall drops rain over the Sierra Crest near Lee Vining, California.

This photograph is, in a number of ways, a sort of happy accident. I had been camped in the Tuolumne Meadows area for several days, photographing in that part of the Yosemite National Park Sierra Nevada high country. On the previous day I had been caught out on a hike in a surprise thunderstorm without rain gear, so I was very conscious of the weather. That evening it occurred to me that, given the approach of some monsoonal moisture and the already wet weather, it was possible that interesting clouds might form in the Mono Lake area the next morning.

That night I peered out of my tent from time to time to see if any clouds were interrupting the light of the full moon, thinking that this might be enough to get me to change my plans for morning photography and make the drive to Mono Lake. At one point a few clouds did dim the moon light, and a bit later a few showers came through. At this point I decided to get up earlier and drive to the lake.

I thought I got up early enough. However, as I drove down highway 395 south of Lee Vining I realized that I had miscalculated and that the sun was already hitting the clouds! I experienced a classic photographer’s dilemma – shoot what I see here now, or race on hoping to shoot the planned thing. I decided to stop and photograph the first light on the Sierra crest from 395 before heading on — but now my original plan for a pre-dawn visit to Mono was out the window. After finishing here I made my way to Mono just as the first sun was striking the lake. I quickly made it out to the shoreline and saw (how could anyone miss it!?) this giant cloud cell blowing up over the Sierra crest just north of Lee Vining.

This post was revised in April, 2025.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: formation

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

Sandstone Towers, Evening Clouds

Mustard Hills

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