Tag Archives: light

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

Canyon Bend

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Canyon Bend
Contrasting warm and cool colors in a narrow section of a desert canyon.

Canyon Bend. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Contrasting warm and cool colors in a narrow section of a desert canyon.

During my hikes up and down this canyon I made quite a few photographs of these lovely narrows. I camped at the mouth of the canyon, and this made it possible to hike up twice — once late in the day and again the next morning. The appearance of a narrow canyon like this one depends so much on the nature of the light, and that was almost completely different during the two visits.

Several things intrigue me about this particular narrows. Sections of it are quite angled, with the wall on one side slanting away and on the other side overhanging the bottom of the canyon substantially. In other words, you don’t look straight up to see the narrow band of sky, but instead you look off to one side a bit. I assume that this is a partially due to erosion following natural lines of weakness in the geology and partly due to the tendency of moving water to undercut a side of the canyon. Of even more interest to a photographer, the color of the light in this canyon and others like it is quite variable. In the darkest section the only light comes from the very blue sky, and the light here is quite blue. (I actually toned it down a bit in the photograph.) However, where the light comes in a bit more directly or perhaps through a wider gap the color is much warmer, as we see on the far wall beyond that gap in this photograph.

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Peninsula Trees, Morning

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Peninsula Trees, Morning
Trees on a rocky peninsula catch the first morning sun at a Yosemite National Park backcountry lake.

Peninsula Trees, Morning. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees on a rocky peninsula catch the first morning sun at a Yosemite National Park backcountry lake.

There’s nothing like have the time for a slow morning wandering the perimeter of a forest-lined Yosemite backcountry lake. We camped at this one for something like four nights back in 2014, when a group of us spent a week in the high country making photographs. Each morning, well before sunrise, it was down to the shoreline wander and photograph.

I love photographs of trees in back-light, but there are some challenges. The obvious one, of course, is that you are pretty much guaranteed to be shooting almost directly into the sun. But second challenge is that the scene between camera position and subject is often in the bright sunlight, even if the background is pleasantly shaded. Photographing on a lake can help with this issue since the water helpfully reflects that shaded background and is hardly affected at all by the direct light, aside from a bit of extra illumination of anything that happens to be floating on the 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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains

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Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains
Morning light on blooming creosote plants in the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Creosote, Dunes, Desert Mountains. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on blooming creosote plants in the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

While much of my recent visit to Death Valley focused on relatively out of the way locations and subjects, I did spend one night at the Stovepipe Wells campground/parking lot. (If you have been there, you understand the reference.) The idea was that sleeping there for one night would put me in the best location to photograph in the nearby dunes in the evening and again very early the next morning. This photograph comes from the morning session, not too long. before I packed my gear, headed back to my vehicle, made a quick breakfast, and drove to another of those isolated locations.

The ritual of morning photography in these dunes is familiar to me by now. I get up before sunrise so that I can arrive at the point of departure for my walk into the dunes well before the sun comes up. Getting to the locations where I like to photograph can take between 15 minutes and a half hour of walking. Once I’m in position I usually have to work somewhat quickly since the light begins to change quickly. I’ll usually photograph a bit in the soft pre-sunrise light first. Then the first direct light on the peaks to the west alerts me that the direct sun will be here soon, and I turn my attention to finding subjects to photograph in the moments when the light/shadow boundary moves through the scene. I made this photograph considerably later, just as the increasingly bright light was a about to begin washing out the subtle early colors.

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

Entering the Narrows

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Entering the Narrows
The path up a desert canyon enters shaded narrows, Death Valley National Park.

Entering the Narrows. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The path through a desert canyon enters shaded narrows, Death Valley National Park.

Most of the time I approach places like this by passing across some sort of alluvial fan, then following a wash that narrows as its walls rise. When I think of these approaches, heat, direct and intense sunlight, dryness, and the sound of boots crunching on rocks come to mind, along with a sense of exposure to these elements. The terrain feels like it is mostly about loose materials — compacted soil, conglomerates, cracked faces, and the water-transported rocks all around.

That all changes when entering narrows like these. The open sky may constrict to a narrow channel far above or it may disappear entirely. The walls, having been scrubbed by moving water and gravel, are smooth and curved. The light becomes soft and often quite blue, coming entirely from the blue sky itself, reflected among the faces as it descends into the canyon. It becomes quiet and my own crunching footsteps are likely the only sound. The expansive world of light and sky on the alluvial fans and washes contracts, contained between the close walls and the next bend in the canyon.

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

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