Tag Archives: hills

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

Death Valley, Mountains, Morning

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Death Valley, Mountains, Morning
Morning light on Death Valley and the base of the Panamint Mountain Range

Death Valley, Mountains, Morning. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on Death Valley and the base of the Panamint Mountain Range

A few recent photographs here have focused on the intimate landscapes of Death Vally canyons. This one leaves the canyon and moves out into the open, looking from the eastern mountains across valley to the base of the Panamint range on the other side. We had driven up in to these mountains in the morning after first photographing dawn from the valley. Here we could watch the morning light traverse the valley — in the photograph it still had not made it to the low hills below our position.

At about the time of my first visits to Death Valley I had also made my first trips to Alaska. It may seem odd, given their different climates, but it struck me that the two places have a lot in common. Most of all, in both places I experiences huge spaces and immense quiet and stillness in ways that I had not really known before. (I rarely experience this in the Sierra, even above timberline, since the distances are smaller and somewhere in the landscape there will be a tree.) In Death Vally, it is hard to make sense of the scale of the landscape. The combination of huge distances, tremendously large features, and a dearth of objects of known size conspire to confuse us. Look across flats to a barren mountain and its valleys, it might seem that you could just walk there. You could, perhaps, but it might take many days.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Kit Fox Hills

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Kit Fox Hills
Evening light on the Kit Fox HIlls, Death Valley

Kit Fox Hills. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on the Kit Fox HIlls, Death Valley

This photograph was a bit of a lucky catch. I had gone to an elevated location where I had a more commanding view of a wide section of Death Valley, but late-afternoon clouds had drifted in above the Cottonwood Mountains to the west and the light ranged from filtered to “blah.” I try to “read” the clouds to predict what may come, and my reading on the conditions was that a small gap between the bottom of the cloud bank and the top of the mountains would produce a brief bit of good light just before the sun dropped beyond the peaks. These predictions don’t always pan out, but this one did. The light first appeared a great distance away at the upper end of the valley, but soon worked its way south across the Grapevine Mountains and then flowed across the low Kit Fox Hills.

I’ve been intrigued by this small row of furrowed hills for a long time. Their coloration and patterns let them stand out from the less differentiated material of the washes above and below them. I did a bit of reading about them during this recent trip, and I understand that they are a remnant of a very old earthquake fault along the west side of the valley. (There are fault zones along the sides of Death Valley, separating the rising mountains from the valley, which is largely filled with material washed down from the mountains.)

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 and Amazon.
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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: Nature

Desert Mountains

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Desert Mountains
Desert mountains rise above Death Valley in evening light

Desert Mountains. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Desert mountains rise above Death Valley in evening light

This view takes me back to something I believe I understood the very first time I saw Death Valley. It was close to twenty years ago, and I had gone there as an adult with a group of middle school and high school kids who were planning a long hike in the park. (The event did not come off quite as planned, but that is a long story that I’ll have to tell some other time.) We arrived at the park boundaries after dark and made camp at the first possible place, a small and mostly unimproved campsite right off the road between the pass we had come over and the valley itself. In the dark I could tell little about the place: it was warm, the wind was blowing, I didn’t see much in the way of plant life. We climbed into tents and sleeping bags for the night.

Early the next morning I crawled out and got my first view of Death Valley. There’s nothing quite like suddenly coming upon your first view of such an iconic place. I recall the specific view even today, looking down across massive alluvial fans, across the valley itself, and at these rugged and bare hills and mountains on the far side so many miles away. This photograph, made from a different location this spring, includes a small section of the scene I looked at back then. It also illustrates one of my strongest impressions of Death Valley — it is a place where the geology is laid bare with virtually no forests or water to obstruct the land itself, even more so than above timberline where there are still lakes and where snow may linger all year. It is also a place, perhaps to our surprise, in which one of the largest factors shaping the landscape has been… water!

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Tree, Winter Light

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Tree, Winter Light
A bare winter tree and clearing tule fog.

Tree, Winter Light. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A bare winter tree and clearing tule fog.

On Sunday there was ground fog all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and I had a few free hours, so I headed out to see what I could find. I went to a place that is very familiar to me, a local haunt where I have hiked and photographed for decades. I had not been there in perhaps a year, so it was good to reestablish my relationship with the location and note a few changes. The little trip also reminded me that it isn’t necessary to travel long distances to find photographic subjects — quite often a closer look at nearby places will reveal worthy subjects.

The idea here was to arrive before the fog cleared, photograph in the thick fog for a while, and then be ready to photograph the brief transition period as it thinned, a time when brilliant and stunning but ephemeral light may appear. During my short drive to this location the fog remained thick, but just before reaching my destination it began to clear, likely because ground fog doesn’t stick around as long in the hills. As I parked and loaded up a light load (my lightweight trail photography setup) there were still some pockets of fog clinging to the hillsides, but in most places there was instead a sort of haze that glowed when I photographed in the direction of the sun. I’m very fond of this kind of light, so I quickly looked for subjects that I could use to advantage, and I soon found this tree standing on a grassy hillside and silhouetted against the glowing atmosphere beyond.

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 and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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