Tag Archives: haze

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

Ridges and Haze

January 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning haze and receding ridges above Death Valley.

There is “stuff” to photograph virtually anywhere you go in Death Valley – from the popular, iconic locations to the furthest back-country areas to nondescript turn-outs along whatever road you happen to be on. One of my goals on this January 2012 trip was to shoot some less-obvious locations. While the image is perhaps not “less obvious,” the location is probably not anything you are going to find in your park guidebook.

Early one morning I was out and about, at least partly thinking about where not to shoot – not the obvious places that first come to mind on a Death Valley morning. (I have nothing at all against photographing those places, too, especially when the conditions are just right.) I ended up more or less randomly heading up a road into some mountains, but without a specific goal in mind. I was simply driving along and watching for the “right” conduction of form and light and color. Several times I thought I saw something, but I didn’t stop, instead just making a quick mental note that I might want to come back to these spots and shoot them. (I didn’t on this trip, but I have them filed away for a future visit.) I finally arrived at a junction where the light was good, got out, set up camera and tripod, and set about looking for subjects.

Sometimes I have a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for, but it might surprise some people that I occasionally – perhaps more than you might think – have no specific photographic objective in mind when I get out the gear and begin my “hunt.” I like to joke that I could find myself almost anywhere with a camera and tripod and eventually find something to shoot within 50 feet of my location. (Occasionally, it might even be a good photograph… :-) While I most certainly do like certain locations, in many cases it isn’t so much about the specific place as it is about hunting for and discovering the visual opportunities presented by whatever place I’m in.

So, I started looking around. And I started making photographs. I photographed a nearby hill that caught some “first light” from the east, with more distant hills in the background. I photographed a long view of a haze-filled valley scene. I pointed my camera up a gully filled with rocks and desert plants. I make a picture of a non-description ridge top pinnacle with interesting clouds behind it. And I put the longest lens I had on the camera and shot almost into the sun to photograph this amazing sequence of stacked ridges high along the spine of a nearby mountain range.

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

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

January 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Sometimes I don’t know at the time of exposure whether or not a photograph might end up as a color or a black and white image. However, I saw this scene as being black white as I made the photograph. It was made just a bit later than a photograph of a similar scene that I posted recently, and by this time the intense dawn color was gone and replaces by more subdued tones and far less saturated color. However, by now the early sun light was beginning to directly strike the lower slopes of the foreground canyon.

The large canyon in the foreground at the base of the two dark ridges is part of a complex sometimes called Trail Canyon. At one time there was a road up the canyon to the area near where I made the photograph – from what I hear it provided access to a mine down in the canyon. Some years ago the road washed out in several places, and the park’s policy now is to mostly let these old tracks simply slide into oblivion, thus allowing the terrain to revert to wilderness. This canyon, like many along the lower reaches of the major mountain ranges of the park, intrigues me with its huge gravel fan and in the way that it breaches the incredibly rugged mountains of the Panamint Range.

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

Dunes, Eureka Valley, Morning

January 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light and haze at the Eureka Valley Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

This seems like a typical desert scene, right? Hot, arid, a bit of summer haze… It may look that way, but it was 28 degrees when I made this photograph!

At the tail end of my early January photography visit to Death Valley National Park I went north from the Ubehebe Crater area on the long gravel route up to the remote Eureka Valley Dunes, which are described as the tallest dunes in the United States, being nearly 700 feet tall. I decided to visit here at the end of my trip for several reasons – first, believe it or not, I had not been to this major feature in the park before. Second, because the trans-Sierra passes were still open in the strange weather year, by going out the north end of the park I figured I could shorten my drive back to the Bay Area a bit.

I arrived the night before, just in time to shoot a little bit as the last light came and went. Then I spent a very cold night “camping” in the back of my car. I was up reasonably early, but it was so cold that it was very hard to get out of the sleeping bag. Finally I did so, and I put on all my warm clothes and marched around the camping area trying to warm up a bit. Finally, after the morning sun topped the tall ridge to the east, the light arrived and my world began to warm up a bit. Eventually I packed up and started my trip back out to civilization. But first I wanted to stop a ways out in the valley and do some long shots back towards the dunes. This is one of those photographs, made from a ways down the road using a long lens.

Somewhat surprisingly, when I finally got back in my car a bit after 9:00 a.m. and long after the sun arrived, I finally thought to check the outside temperature on my car’s thermometer. At about 9:15, out in the valley, and in the sun… the temperature had finally risen… to 28 degrees!

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

First Light, Southern Death Valley

January 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

As seen from Aguereberry Point, first dawn light spills across the lower end of Death Valley.

I have previously photographed from this location high in the Panamint Range and overlooking a vast portion of Death Valley National Park and its surroundings. The view stretches east to 11,000+’ peaks in Nevada and west to the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and great distances north and south to places and features that I cannot identify. My previous visits had all been late in the day, and I had often wondered what the location might be like at the start of the day. So, on this visit to Death Valley, a trip to Aguereberry Point before dawn was on my agenda.

As usual, I awoke well before dawn at my camp site back at Stovepipe Wells. (You can often tell if there are other photographers about – in the dark period an hour or more before sunrise you hear people quietly get up, quickly start their engines, and drive away.) I headed up into the Panamints and turned off at the start of the six-mile gravel road that goes to this point, and arrived just before the first colorful light began to light up the sky – and I was pleased to see that there were some interesting clouds. I have been fascinated by this view over the shoulder of a ridge dropping down toward the Valley above Trail Canyon, so I composed a photograph that juxtaposed this diagonal with the end of the Black Mountains across the valley and the light-filled atmosphere beyond where the very first sun was coming across lower Death Valley.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: haze

Ridges and Haze

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

Dunes, Eureka Valley, Morning

First Light, Southern Death Valley

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