Tag Archives: light

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

Titus Canyon Narrows

December 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon road passes through the Narrows as light reflects down from canyon walls high above

Titus Canyon road is a well-known “attraction” in Death Valley National Park, traveling from the eastern park boundary in the Amargosa Valley near the town of Beatty, Nevada over the Grapevine Mountains and then down to Death Valley itself. It is also known as a fairly rough road, subject to washouts and closures after storms – not a true four-wheel-drive road, but certainly not for the faint of heart of those who are not accustomed to rough desert and mountain driving. (Many chose to forgo the long drive and instead hike into the canyon from its mouth, from which the spectacular “narrows” section is easily accessible.)

I have been getting to better know the country through which this road passes as I’ve driven it many times during the past decade or so. More recently I have been slowing down and taking nearly the full day to drive its length – and in doing so I am able to see and photograph things that I used to miss. Oddly, since it is often regarded as the main attraction of the route, I’ve often found it very difficult to photograph the narrows section near the end of the road just before it spills out at the top of a giant alluvial fan along the edge of Death Valley. Perhaps it is the predominantly gray color of the rocks – once you’ve photographed the canyons of the Southwest, California rock just looks so drab! This time I think I passed through the narrows section at what must have been just about the ideal time of day and season, and light hitting upper canyon walls was reflecting down into the bottom of the canyon and creating some interesting, albeit subtle, colors and soft reflections on the rocks.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Pre-Dawn Light, San Joaquin Valley

December 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pre-dawn light and thin fog above marshland in California’s San Joaquin Valley

A foggy fall landscape with birds from California’s San Joaquin Valley, where I often go at tho time of year to photograph migratory birds and the often foggy, cold, and damp places they live. The region is largely agricultural, with lots of cattle being raised nearby – but in the winter the pastures are flooded and a huge variety of birds can be found here, including geese, herons, white pelicans, cranes, ibises, egrets, and more.

As I usually do, I left the San Francisco Bay area very early in the morning, well before dawn, so that I could arrive here before the sun came up. I had already been shooting a while when I stopped next to this pond where a small group of coots (?) were clustered together. I had been looking for some sort of foreground focus around which to build a photograph that included those interesting clouds over in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, clouds that here are just beginning to pick up the dawn light that had yet to reach the valley, were there was still a light blanket of fog.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

December 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Momentary sunset light on virga and clouds of an incoming late-autumn weather front above California’s San Joaquin Valley

As I mentioned in my previous post, this mid-December day was one of variable weather and sky conditions that ranged from fog to clear to mixed clouds to the arrival of a weak weather front that completely block the light at times. We spent the entire day mostly photographing migratory birds in this wetland area, but also making some landscape photographs when the birds were less available.

After a lunch break at a nearby town we returned for the afternoon and evening light and the prospective fly-in of geese and cranes. We always have an eye on the sky, trying to imagine and predict what the evening might bring, and the prospects did not look too encouraging. I love clouds… but out here too many clouds can simply kill the light that can otherwise become very interesting late in the day. As the afternoon wore on towards evening, it looked more and more like the light was perhaps not going to improve, and bands of thick clouds frequently blocked the sun, leaving mostly a sort of gray haze where we were. Occasionally the clouds did thin and we had moments of interesting light and sky, but overall things seemed to be heading in the gray direction. (This happens. If you shoot enough you will have days of utterly astonishing light, balanced by days when the light is simply blah. You make what you can from the light that you find, and usually something works.) Then, to our complete surprise, a few beams of sunset light found their way through small breaks in the clouds to our west, and for perhaps five minutes we had a light show as cloud bottoms and virga were gently lit from below, turning shades of red and pink and purple.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: light

Titus Canyon Narrows

Pre-Dawn Light, San Joaquin Valley

Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

Sand and Cracked Mud

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