Tag Archives: light

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

Dunes and Hills, Evening

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Dunes and Hills, Evening
Evening light on rocky desert hills and sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Dunes and Hills, Evening. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on rocky desert hills and sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

You may see a few photographs of this ridge and its low peaks over the next week or two. It was not my main reason for going to this location, nor was it my target when I set out on foot to photograph nearby. But as soon as I started walking I found myself intrigued by its form, the large valley beyond it, and the combination of rocky formations and a thin distribution of blown sand. I ended up photographing it on successive days on my way to and from another subject.

The ridge illustrates an important general fact about much of the Death Valley National Park geography, namely that there are a whole lot of ridges and valleys that trend roughly in a north-south direction. (Technically, the line tens to run sort of northwest to southeast.) It turns out that this is really important to photographers, since much of the early morning and early evening light either strikes features directly or else leaves them in shadow. If you are keeping track of my photographs of this feature, you’ll see a clear example of this. In a previously posted photograph made at one end of the day, the ridge is almost entirely in shadow, with just a bit of rim light near the top, and only the distant mountains are in the sun. Here the table are turned, and the ridge is fully illuminated while the distant mountains are in soft, shadow light.

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, Photographs: Southern California

Creosote, Shadowed Dunes

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Creosote, Shadowed Dunes
Creosote plant in sunlight, backed by shadowed sand dunes.

Creosote, Shadowed Dunes. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Creosote plant in sunlight, backed by shadowed sand dunes.

Sand dune landscapes provide all sorts of surprises. After seeing many photographs of impressive blowing sand and dust storms, you might think that is the norm — but most of the time the dunes are quiet and still. In the daytime there often doesn’t seem to be a lot going on in a visual sense. But go there at the earliest and latest moments of the day, and the light changes so quickly that it is almost impossible to keep up. Here there was only a brief moment when the soft light fell on the dune and the creosote plant and left the further dunes in soft, cool-toned light.

It is common to think of landscape photography as a slow and deliberate process. In fact, at times and with certain subjects it can be, and the photographer may have a lot of time to look and contemplate. But in this edge-of-day light things happen so quickly that photography can become a kind of action sport. The light does something “over there” for a brief moment, but when I look up something new is happening elsewhere. I turn my attention, quickly make a photograph or two, and right away some new combination of form and light emerges. And this whole dynamic show itself only lasts for a short time between midday bright (and often harsh) light and darkness.

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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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir

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Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir
High clouds, fog, and brilliant light on a winter day over San Luis Reservoir, California.

Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High clouds, fog, and brilliant light on a winter day over San Luis Reservoir, California.

Because it lies between the southern San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Great Central Valley — and on the route to many interesting places ranging from the Sierra to Southern California and Death Valley — I have driven past the San Luis Reservoir probably hundreds of times over the years. (I’m old enough to barely recall the area before there was a reservoir, from trips when I was a young child.) Being just another part of the system to transport water in the state, I hardly think of it as one of California’s great scenic wonders.

But in the right conditions and the right light, it becomes difficult to ignore it as a landscape subject. The reservoir is huge and it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. Because of the expansive scale, light can reflect off its surface in ways that mimic what I sometimes see along the Pacific Ocean coast. It also picks up the winter atmosphere, with its fogs and mists, from the Central Valley. And because the road runs more or less along its northern shore, all of this is frequently backlit, as in this photograph that I made in the middle of the day while returning from the Central Valley.

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.

Photographs: Agriculture, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Dormant Trees and Fog

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Dormant Trees and Fog
Dormant trees in Central Valley winter tule fog.

Dormant Trees and Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dormant trees in Central Valley winter tule fog.

This is the second in a series of photographs I made of this Central Valley orchard on a very foggy winter morning. On a typical morning with these conditions, there comes a time when the fog begins to move and thin and the light begins to come through the fog and make it glow. (This is tule fog, which forms at night when the moisture level is right, and ends up producing a thin but often very dense layer of low fog.) I had been photographing birds in thicker fog, and when the thinning process began I moved to this location where I thought the trees might be an interesting subject.

In some ways it is an easy matter to photograph a subject like this one. It is naturally mysterious and compelling, both from the fog itself and from the vaguely anthropomorphic forms of the dormant trees. However, once I begin to work with such a subject, things invariably start to become more complicated than I expected — how to create a balanced composition? What camera position gives the most interesting juxtaposition of trunks? How much to focus on trunks and how much on the upper branches How to deal with inevitable intrusions of branches into the scene. My solution is a combination of looking and thinking, relying on intuition, and trying many different approaches.

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.

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