Tag Archives: fracture

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

Fractured Sandstone Detail

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Fractured Sandstone Detail - Details of fractured sandstone rock, Zion National Park
Details of fractured sandstone rock, Zion National Park

Fractured Sandstone Detail. Zion National Park, Utah. October 12, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Details of fractured sandstone rock, Zion National Park

On this day we had driven across a good chunk of Arizona and southern Utah while traveling from Moab towards Springdale and Zion – and it had rained, heavily at times and lightly most of the day. Back in Arizona many of the creeks and rivers had come back to life, and north of where we were it may have been snowing. By the time we reached Zion and headed across the Mount Carmel Highway on our way to Springdale, everything was quite wet.

Rain radically changes the appearance of this portion of the park. (In truth, it changes the appearance of many things, but that is a topic for another post!) There were puddles and rivulets everywhere, and those dry waterfalls that characterize this country were no longer dry. The clouds soften the light and fill in the shadows, and the moisture intensifies the colors, especially the red and pink colors of the sandstone. Shortly after entering the park we pulled over and spent some “quality time” exploring this change near a small valley that held pools and a little temporary creek, and I found this area of fractured sandstone.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall

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Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall - A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.
A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

Time for one more Zion photograph. Actually, it may not be quite the last from this April visit to that park and other beautiful areas of Utah. It almost doesn’t matter exactly where this photograph was made, since red rock and green trees can be found all over the area. Basically we were driving along a park road in the afternoon, with eyes wide open and looking about for photographic subjects, when we stopped alongside a section of the cliff that was still mostly in the shade, and in front of which beautiful trees were growing.

I liked the conjunction of the hard, reddish rock with its vertical cracks and horizontal patterns… with a single living thing, the very green tree growing up against the cliff face in the shade. Sometimes the colors of the rock can seem almost unreal. I feel a bit that way now when I look at the intense red-yellow colors in the upper right corner of the frame.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

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Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants - Plants grow among craks of a fractured sandstone cliff, Zion National Park
Plants grow among cracks of a fractured sandstone cliff, Zion National Park

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Plants grow among cracks of a fractured sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

On my first morning in Zion (we had arrived there the previous afternoon) we headed up into the park and Zion Canyon, though which the Virgin River flows. Although I was more or less not looking for icons to photograph, I had stopped along the way to photograph that icon, the view of the Watchman from the bridge on the Mt. Carmel highway. (At least I could console myself that I was not shooting it at the usual sunset time, but instead in the early morning. ;-) After a brief stop for that purpose, I headed up the canyon with a plan of visiting the Weeping Rocks and seeing what sort of photographs might be possible there.

After a short walk up to the rocks, I figured out that it wasn’t going to quite be my photographic “cup of tea.” However, along this walk I did find some other interesting subjects. One that I’ve shared previously was a very close view of some brand new spring leaves on the trees that grow along the trail. Another subject was the nearby sandstone cliffs that here come down close to the level of the trail. One area nearby featured immense vertical blocks of the striking red sandstone, with interesting crack systems and some plants growing in the cracks. I made several exposures of this area in full shade, and this vertical composition is one that I like a lot. I’ve probably said this before and I’ll no doubt mention it again, but for a guy who is so used to shooting the equally impressive but much less colorful granite of the Sierra, the colors of these rocks proved irresistible! And the color variations are amazing – here you can see some areas where the color trends toward purple.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Plants and Fractured Granite

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Plants and Fractured Granite
Plants and Fractured Granite

Plants and Fractured Granite. Yosemite National Park, California. September 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Various rain-moistened plants growing in a fracture in lichen-encrusted glacial granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was made in almost exactly the same spot as the photograph I posted yesterday, in an area of water-stained granite along the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. Not only was I fortunate to have soft light, but it was cloudy and it had been raining lightly just before we went out to shoot. You can’t ask for much better conditions for such a subject: soft light from the clouds, colors saturated by the moisture, and a few small drops of rain still on the leaves of the plants. (The latter may not quite be visible in this little jpg image.)

I’m always on the lookout for this little intimate landscapes, especially if they include Sierra granite. I had been wandering around this area trying to find ways to make compositions out of the reddish and rain-moistened rock, shooting trees and small plants and even a few isolated rocks. This plant was growing out of a narrow crack and hanging downward, its green contrasting with the reddish-brown color of the rocks . The arrangement of the nearly vertical crack, the diagonal boundaries between the red rock and the gray rock, and the mottled texture of the lichen also caught my eye.

When I share a photograph like this one, I’m reminded of my friend Mike, a retired Yosemite ranger, who pointedly reminded me once that sometimes there really is no good reason to name the precise location of such a scene. The location is irrelevant to the photograph, similar little scenes are repeated thousands of times over throughout the Sierra, and it isn’t really about the specific place at all.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.