Tag Archives: hills

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

Morning Clouds Above the Manifold, Zabriskie Point

December 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 9 Comments

Morning clouds fill the sky above the Manifold at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

I posted a monochrome version of this photograph yesterday, so there is perhaps a bit less to say about it in this post. To recap briefly, this is a photograph I made over three years ago during a spring visit to Death Valley NPS. This was a bit of a different morning for photographing at Zabriskie Point, if I recall correctly. Usually, photographing here is pretty straightforward – and once you’ve shot it a couple times in “normal” conditions, there is a basic pattern to the progression of light that becomes fairly (though perhaps not totally) clear. Normal conditions here basically mean perfectly clear skies with the sun coming up to the left from the perspective of this photograph or behind in some of the other familiar shots that include Manley Beacon – and light that sequentially illuminates subjects beginning with the highest peaks of the Panamint Range across the Valley and gradually working down into the Valley and finally to the rugged shapes at Zabriskie Point itself.

But clouds can change everything. If I am going to shoot at Zabriskie, I watch for conditions that will bring them. I will generally not stop there if it is “another beautiful clear sunrise” at Zabriskie. (If you haven’t been there before, you should stop and take in this stunning scene, but I’m often looking for something a bit different.) While the results in clear conditions are relatively predictable, they are not at all as predictable when there are clouds. You can end up with something very special… or with a drab, flat, and gray scene. But that’s the thing about special conditions – they wouldn’t be special if they were predictable and frequent!

Thinking back to this morning, my recollection is that it may have been one of those when I arrived to think, “Oh, boy, clouds!” – only to think a bit later, “I wish those clouds would move and give me some light!” I recall some bits of dawn light that were mostly blocked by the clouds. But the very clouds that blocked the hoped-for first dawn light thoughtfully assembled themselves into these impressive forms just a bit later, at right about the time that the warm side-light was getting down into the rugged folds of the Manifold and Gower Wash.

This photograph is 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Morning Clouds Above the Manifold, Zabriskie Point

December 11, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

Morning clouds fill the sky above the Manifold at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Recently I’ve been going over some of my Death Valley photographs, and as I do so I discover a few that “missed the cut” the first time around but which I kind of like now when I see them a few years later. This photograph was made in 2007, on a spring morning when beautiful clouds filled the sky above Zabriskie Point and Death Valley. I have versions of this photograph in both black and white and color – I like both, though the effect is quite different. (I’ll post the color version as soon as tomorrow.)

I’ve referred to the striking central feature of the “badlands” above Gower Wash – the hill with the curving gullies and the darker material along the top – as “the Manifold” for a few years. I know I saw this label applied to the feature somewhere, but I cannot find the source now. In any case, it seems deserving of its own name, and “the Manifold” works for me.

One more observation… I have written elsewhere about my attitude toward photographing iconic scenes – an Zabriskie Point is certainly iconic! It is a bit of a long, complicated story, but this photograph illustrates part of my philosophy. I will not always bother to stop and photograph such a site, having seen many beautiful mornings (and a few evenings) there. But I do watch for special or unusual conditions, and when they occur I may well head to an icon like Zabriskie to try to make a photograph that is unlike the usual images.

Since I am in the process of reviewing many Death Valley photographs, don’t be too surprised if a few more older photos from that location show up here soon.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Mount Morrison and Desert Hills, Morning

December 9, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on sagebrush covered Owens Valley hills and the Sierra crest near Mount Morrison.

I was out in this section of Owens Valley early on this October morning, initially to photograph at a small lake further out in the valley. However, knowing parts of this area pretty well from past visits, I wanted to try a photograph that included the foreground tree-covered ridge in morning light with the Sierra peaks in the background – so I headed back on a gravel road that travels a bit north of the paved road I had taken earlier in the morning. I found this scene with the early light illuminating the crest of the Sierra and the sagebrush-covered foreground hills, but with morning shadows still lying across the lower eastern face of the Sierra just south of Convict Lake.

The dusting of early season snow was left over from a week of early autumn storms. Mt. Morrison is the huge and impressive summit at the right end of the ridge. Mt. Baldwin is the small but very high summit near the left end. In between is a vertical rock face that appears to be split by a crack – I think it is called “the Great White Fang.”

This photograph is 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: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Basin Mountain, Afternoon Light and Haze

December 6, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Basin Mountain and the Sierra Nevada crest rise above Round Valley on a hazy afternoon.

There is a certain kind of afternoon light in the eastern Sierra that is hard to photograph – looking up at the range from Owens Valley into the afternoon sun the haze can be bluish and decrease detail and the light can be very bright. But it is a part of the experience of the “east side” that we all know, I think. I can’t say that I’ve tried to photograph it very often, but I stopped just off of highway 395 in the Round Valley area on this early October afternoon when I saw the rugged foothills rising above the sagebrush towards the Buttermilks and Basin Mountain and the Sierra crest around Mount Humphreys beyond.

For me, this is one sort of classic eastern Sierra view. Imagine a very warm or even hot afternoon. You are driving through high desert sagebrush country – which often surprises people who are headed to the Sierra and are thinking about high mountains and cool temperatures. The mountains to the west rise precipitously from the floor of Owens Valley, with peaks that can be nearly 10,000 feet higher than the lowlands in some places. You see snow on the peaks and sometimes on the slopes of the mountains. You know that there are places up there where you can park a car and walk out in cool mountain air and head up a trail through meadows and forests and cross a ridge into the alpine world – but the terrain gives little hint of this from below. The light gleaming on snow fields and rock projected into the sky reminds you of this other world high above.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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