Tag Archives: landscape

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

Strata

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Strata
Sort morning light illumnates rugged desert strata

Strata. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft morning light illumnates rugged desert strata.

Desert landscapes can have an almost surreal quality, with features that are close to unbelievable. (I suspect that this happens in most landscapes, but the “barren” desert reveals them more clearly.) The landscape is laid bard, and we get a clear view of eroded features, twisted rock strata, contrasting colors produced by layers of different materials.

In certain places, in the right light, the contests and patterns become even more striking. This is one of those locations, and it was a day with that kind of light. These eroded hills are threaded with both very light and very dark strata, sometimes directly juxtaposed. On this morning the low-angle, directional light was softened a bit by high clouds.

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, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Hills And Mountains

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Desert Hills And Mountains
Morning light on eroded forms and desert mountains

Desert Hills And Mountains. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on eroded forms and desert mountains.

Often when I photograph in a familiar place I look at certain subjects, find them appealing, but just don’t quite yet know how to see them as photographs. Sometimes I attempt a photograph and end up dissatisfied. Other times I look and don’t even photograph. The far ridge in this photograph has been one of those subjects.

The ridge is very impressive — high, barren, and rugged — and it is easily visible from some very popular locations in Death Valley National Park. However, perhaps because access is not easy or possibly because better known features are nearby, I rarely see it photographed. On this spring morning I had been photographing one of those other locations, and I looked up to see the high clouds above the ridge and the backlight on the foreground hills… and it seemed like the right time to give this scene a try once again.

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: Nature

Clearing Storm, Evening

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Clearing Storm, Evening
A spring storm clears in evening light, San Luis Obispo County

Clearing Storm, Evening. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A spring storm clears in evening light, San Luis Obispo County.

Late in the day had travelled across the main valley of the Carizzo Plain to a location that I thought would bring good evening light form the west. It had been a day of mixed and changeable weather conditions — sunlight one moment, rain the next, and patterns of both speeding across the landscape. My plan was to stake out a location open to the sunset light and hope for the best. It turned out OK, though clouds stood between me and the light and it never really did light up where I was standing.

However, because I was up against the mountains of the Temblor Range I had a bit of elevation, just enough to gain a wider view of the landscape. As sunset approached, breaks appeared in the cloud cover on the far side of the valley, and I was able to use a long lens to pick out vignettes from this larger landscape. This photograph makes in clear that I was shooting from the shadows, so to speak — look at the dark valley, broken by sky light reflected in water. But beyond that a newly green springtime ridge was in the sun, with beams of golden light coming through the clouds.

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 | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Sand Storm, Desert Ridges

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Sand Storm, Desert Ridges
The dust from a nearby sand storm obscures a series of ascending ridges.

Sand Storm, Desert Ridges. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The dust from a nearby sand storm obscures a series of ascending ridges..

On this afternoon I made quite a few photographs, and they range from a few with striking sunset and dusk colors to others that are almost devoid of details in the blowing sand and dust. Yes, it was a sand storm day, and that is precisely what drew us to this portion of the valley. High winds from the southwest were raking the sand dunes and raising giant, fast-moving clouds of sand and dust. They raced across the valley, traveling northeast toward the Amargosa Mountain range.

I made this photograph very close to the point where we entered the cloud of dust/sand. We had come up from a part of the valley further south, and as we got closer to the dunes and the source of the haze the dust began to obscure the sky and the view. We stopped here before entering the worse of the cloud and made a few photographs looking into it, with the tall mountains to the north nearly obscured

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 | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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