Tag Archives: lone

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

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Evening

April 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone creosote among sand dunes in evening light

This photograph is the product of repetitive evening dune wandering, often of a somewhat random nature. Since I had been out and about for many hours earlier on this day, I didn’t get back to camp from my “morning” adventures until close to 4:00 PM. This left me with less time to travel for my evening shoot, so I picked a nearby location with plenty of sand dunes and headed out toward the dunes a bit more than an hour before sunset.

I started with only the most general of plans, but with confidence that there is always plenty to see in such places — small abstract patterns, the larger curves and tonal variations of the sand, tiny subjects including the tracks of animals, the many plants that grow here, and the changing light itself. As I wandered into an out-of-the-way area of these dunes where no one else was photographing I simply slowed down, looked, and followed my instincts and interest. As I moved along I found myself on the top of a small dune and saw some possible views across the ocean of sand toward the far mountains. Looking for compositions in this landscape I spotted this solitary creosote bush in a low area, softly illuminated by a bit of remaining evening light. I moved a bit to position it against a lighter area of sand below the curving shadow that crosses the frame and then made a few exposures in the post-sunset light.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Wetlands Tree, Evening

January 16, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A last beam of evening light illuminates a lone tree in San Joaquin Valley wetlands

My recollection of this early winter, late December day in the San Joaquin Valley is that it was mostly a foggy and gray day, with direct light being quite rare. I’m usually fine with that, since the fog is certainly a strong element in the character of the place at this time of the year and because I like photographing in cloudy, foggy, and misty conditions. (Gray is another story… ;-) On a day like this, while I’m happy to see some glow through the clouds and fog, I’m also often just fine with conditions that some might regard as boring.

Sometimes, even on a gray day, there are surprises. We had photographed all morning, taken a brief break away from here to grab some lunch, and then returned to photograph in the middle afternoon and on into the evening. For the most part, the combination of some fog and high clouds kept things fairly “atmospheric” for the rest of the day. But not long before sunset there was one of these “surprises.” To be honest, when I am watching the conditions carefully and predicting where they might lead, there are less likely to be literal surprises. Perhaps they are better described as positive evolutions of potential conditions. In this case, even though it was cloudy and gray, I had my eyes on the possibility that the sun might briefly shine through a gap along the horizon just before sunset. And that is exactly what happened! For a brief span of a few minutes the light gradually warmed and intensified, starting almost imperceptibly but soon becoming quite obvious. As this happened I move quickly to this nearby spot where I had photographed this tree many times before and therefore knew that it could be my central subject, standing out in the warm light against the flat valley marshes and flatland extending into the distance.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls

December 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red sandstone canyon walls tower above a lone cottonwood tree with early fall colors

This tree is becoming my favorite (or maybe only second favorite…) tree in this part of Utah. It grows in the bottom of a canyon in a place that requires a bit of hiking — and a bit of driving — to access. It is perhaps not all that much better than hundreds or thousands of other trees in such places, but it happens to be one that I saw and photographed!

A group of photographers walked down this canyon on a beautiful October day when sunlight filtered down into the canyon from high above. We were in no hurry, and we frequently stopped to work a particular subject and often separated as each of us focused on his or her personal discoveries. This section of the canyon is one of those where you have route options — you could either walk down the bottom of the canyon in the creek bed (which I did on my walk back out) or you could take a slight shortcut up and across the higher ground on the inside of one of the bends in the canyon. For no particular reason that I can recall now, I decided to take the higher route in this spot and as a result I ended up with this view of the lone cottonwood tree tucked into the canyon at the base of this gigantic sandstone cliff, the intensity of the color of its autumn foliage increased by the soft, reflected canyon light.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Boulders, Tree, and Dark Granite

September 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

A solitary tree stands on granite slabs among glacial erratic boulders against the dark background of a granite face in shadow

I have previously posted a few photographs from this early August four-day shoot in Yosemite, when I ranged between about Olmsted Point and Mono Lake for about four days. The photography was a bit strange compared to more normal years – there was smoke in the air from a fire near Mammoth Lakes and there was not much water due to the drought afflicting the mountains after a second very dry winter. So some of my photography instincts may have been challenged a bit, and I had to adapt to conditions – sometimes ending up shooting in a different place than planned when the haze was too thick, sometimes using the haze as part of the photograph, and also ranging a bit more widely than I might usually do.

On this morning I had decided to “work” that area between roughly Tenaya Lake and some rocky slabs a bit past Olmsted Point. I began at Tenaya just before sunrise, but the smoke haze was making things difficult. I made a few photographs along the curving shore as the first sun hit nearby ridges, but I wasn’t especially happy with the atmosphere or the color and quality of the light so I moved on. The slabs and domes along the road to the west of Tenaya Lake, which track the road for some distance and spread well beyond the road itself, have been an ongoing subject of interest to me. While the sun had hit the highest peaks by the time I got there, it had not quite worked its way down to these slabs, so I found some likely groups of glacial erratic boulders and various small trees and made some photographs. In this one, a single tree stands beyond a group of large boulders that had just been hit by the first light, and across a nearby canyon large granite walls are still in shadow.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: lone

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Evening

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

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