Badlands Gully. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A deeply forrowed and eroded badlands gully, Death Valley National Park.

This scene may look familiar — I shared a vertical-orientation photograph of the same subject a few weeks ago. Often a subject strongly suggests either the vertical “portrait” orientation or the horizontal “landscape” arrangement. But sometimes a subject can work either way, albeit with different effects. Here I feel that the vertical interpretation more strongly followed the upward trajectory of the central gully, but that this version embeds it more firmly in the converging diagonal lines on the sides and emphasizes its curve.

This is not a major Death Valley feature. If you went to the location where I made the photograph you might not notice it. The gully is relatively small and high on a hillside, so I used a long focal length to frame it tightly. (I’m a big fan of long focal lengths for landscape photography.) It was early enough that the light was not yet intense and stark, and a bit of high cloudiness softened it a bit more.

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

Special Note: Patty and I are presenting a Silicon Valley Open Studios event today. Look us up (Dan | Patty) or contact us for information. Visit us and see our prints!

Across Desert Hills. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Nearly-barren desert hills rise toward distant, haze-obscured mountains.

The desert landscape has many moods. When we are honest, I think most photographers will confess to a preference for focusing on aspects of this landscape that show only a part of this truth. (There’s nothing wrong with that, but viewers should be aware that photographs of the desert are not equivalent to the place itself.) We lean toward times and scenes where the colors are more attractive, we seek out subjects full of lines and interesting curves, we can be like to include the rarer spectacular skies rather than the common pure blue sky, and we can’t resist familiar and iconic subjects.

This isn’t one of those photographs, or at least I don’t think it is. At most times this succession of rising hills might barely attract your attention as you passed it on the way to something else. But I have photographed that “something else” plenty of times, so when I saw the late afternoon light slanting across the tops of the edges and fold, the bits of brighter vegetation, and the haze-obscured background I felt free to stop and look for a photograph.

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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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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