Tag Archives: hills

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Klamath Coastline

June 15, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mist and fog along the rugged Northern California shoreline near the Klamath River

On the final day of my recent photography trip to Redwood National and State Parks I spent the morning photographing at Prairie Creek Redwood State Park before packing up and starting my drive south. My plan was to split the long drive back to the San Francisco Bay Area into two parts. On this first day of the return trip I would head south through more redwood country, drop to the coast above Fort Bragg, and then spend the night there before heading home the next morning.

I left Prairie Creek – somewhat reluctantly, since it deserved more time — and heading south on highway one. If you have driven almost any part of this remarkable route you know that there are photographs everywhere, not just in the parks, so I planned to stop along the way to make photographs. The route often alternately rises to cross coastal bluffs and ridges and then drops right down to the shoreline. At or just below the high points I can often find panoramic views up and down the coast, and this was one of the first such views that I stopped for. The light was subdued — hence the decision to go with a monochrome rendition — but the atmosphere was remarkable, with the surf throwing up low mist clouds right along the shoreline and the remnants of fog muting the distant features.

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

Kit Fox Hills, Amargosa Range

April 22, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Amargosa Range mountains rise behind the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley

These low, deeply eroded, and colorful (in the right light) Death Valley hills lie at the western base of the Amargosa Range near the start of the road heading north toward the Scotty’s Castle area. I recently read that they may be the remnants of an old earthquake fault along the eastern side of Death Valley, marking a division between the rising mountains and the sediment-filled valley. I have walked along the base of these hills, though I still need to find the time to more extensively explore their rugged and eroded landscape.

Late in the day they intercept almost the very last sunlight to reach the valley floor before sunset. With that in mind, I have photographed them many times, often from a good distance away across the valley. That was the case on this evening, when I found a spot elevated above the valley floor and climbed to its summit to watch the late-day light. It was one of those evenings when the light was unpredictable. There were clouds to the west above the Cottonwood mountains, which can turn out to be either a good thing or a bad thing. The clouds may light up at sunset and the minutes just after… or they may simply block the sun and “turn out the lights” on sunset photography. It looked like the latter might turn out to be the case as I watched the sun descend toward a band of thicker clouds. But there was a small gap between the base of the clouds and the top of the mountains, and the sunlight shone through this gap for a few minutes, casting beautiful soft light on these hills.

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

Death Valley, Mountains, Morning

April 20, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Kit Fox Hills

April 8, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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 Photography

Tag Archives: hills

Klamath Coastline

Kit Fox Hills, Amargosa Range

Death Valley, Mountains, Morning

Kit Fox Hills

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