Tag Archives: gully

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

Sunrise Above the Badlands

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Sunrise Above the Badlands
Sunrise on desert peaks works its toward badlands.

Sunrise Above the Badlands. © Copyright 2022.G Dan Mitchell.

Sunrise on desert peaks works its toward badlands.

There are some landscapes that stump me. Even after returning many times, often over a period of years, I still find it hard to “see” them photographically. While I don’t generally have that issue with Death Valley National Park as a whole, there are a few locations where this comes up, and at least a couple of them are relatively iconic places that are visited by the majority of the park’s visitors. My feeling about both of them has long been… interesting places, but not my thing photographically. In the back of my mind, in both cases, I wonder if it is more that I still need to just figure out how to see them.

A chance comment that a friend made about one of these two locations recently stuck in my mind and I kept thinking about it on my January visit to the park. On the last morning of this trip I went to one of these place and poked around a bit. Perhaps surprisingly, this photograph includes a feature of the landscape where I have stopped in the past, looked, and kept going. This time, however, I went ahead and set up and then made a few photographs as the early morning sun was striking the high peaks to the east.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Desert Mountains, Before Sunrise

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Desert Mountains, Before Sunrise
A canyon twists down through rugged desert mountains in pre-sunrise light.

Desert Mountains, Before Sunrise. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A canyon twists down through rugged desert mountains in pre-sunrise light.

One thing that has always appealed to me about the desert landscape — which for me often means the Death Valley landscape — is that the geology is laid bare almost everywhere. So many landscapes are to a great extent about what covers them — the forests, grasslands, lakes, meadows, rivers, and more. But here most of the vegetation is so sparse (or it matches the colors of rocks and soil so well) that we see straight to the underlying earth — the canyons, the colors of rock and soil, strata twisted and uplifted, runoff channels, landslides, fans, and more.

This canyon descends toward Death Valley from high in the Panamint Mountains, following a twisting path down from the heights as it links up tributary valleys and eventually forms a broad wash that spills out at the top of a gigantic gravel fan. I made this photograph before sunrise, when the soft, early light suffused the canyons and revealed subtle details that can be lost in harsher light later in the day.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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, Photographs: Southern California

Badlands Detail

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Badlands Detail
A small, deeply eroded gully cuts through badlands terrain, Death Valley National Park.

Badlands Detail. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small, deeply eroded gully cuts through badlands terrain, Death Valley National Park.

You may have noticed that few of my photographs from Death Valley feature the usual iconic subjects. Perhaps an explanation is in order. There’s nothing at all wrong with photographing those famous subjects — as someone once said, “There’s a reason they are icons!” I photograph them, too, when the conditions are special or unusual. In the right conditions you might even find me lined up at Zabriskie Point at dawn! (Though these days, if I photograph that subject, it is more likely to be in the middle of the day or perhaps at night. That’s a long story — too long for this short post.)

These days much of my photography in the park falls into a few basic categories. There are some photographs that I have had in mind for a long time that still haven’t quite come together the way I want, and I return to these subjects regularly and continue to work on them. I’m also very interested in pushing out the boundaries of my relationship to this landscape, and on every visit I got to places that I have not visited before. Another approach that has come to interest me more and more here is to excerpt small bits of the larger landscape and treat them as the subject. (I believe that sometimes a close look at a fragment of the landscape can tell us more about it than a photograph that tries to “include it all.”) This photograph falls into the latter category — this little ravine is high on a hill in a place where, I’d wager, most people probably don’t even notice it. But at the right moment in the right light it becomes something special.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

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

Trees on Sandstone Cliff

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Trees on Sandstone Cliff
A row of coniferous trees ascends a steep gully on a sandstone cliff face.

Trees on Sandstone Cliff. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A row of coniferous trees ascends a steep gully on a sandstone cliff face.

There is something compelling about individual or small groups of trees growing in unlikely places. It is hard to precisely describe why this is, but my friend Charles Cramer has referred to photographs of them as “brave little tree” images. (I don’t know if Charlie coined the term, but he’s the first person I heard use it.) Perhaps there is something metaphorical about these trees stand in such places, where they are tall and straight like these examples or twisted and stunted by their stark environment. Whatever the reason, I know I’m not the only person attracted to them.

This group of conifers grows high up on a sandstone cliff in Zion National Park, improbably forming a very tine forest in a very difficult place. Such trees, viewed up close, often seem to thrive on almost nothing at all, putting roots down in little more than cracks in the rock. This group rises from a cluster of smaller shrubs and trees to a few larger trees in the widest part of the ledge, and then the trees continue upwards, diminishing in size.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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