Tag Archives: mesquite

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

Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk

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Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk
Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk

Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dusk light above a hill near Mesquite Flat in Death Valley, backed by a large alluvial fan from Tucki Mountain.

At the end of this day I was shooting from the top of a low hill in the Valley east of Stovepipe Wells, and there were interesting subjects throughout almost the entire 360 degree panorama around this elevated position. With this in mind, I had chosen to use the long 100-400mm zoom so that I could have some flexibility in composing elements of this huge scene.

I was mainly working with things that were in the large arc to my west (dunes and Cottonwood mountains and base of Tucki Mountain), north (the main Valley and transverse dunes), and east (the mountains running along that edge of the Valley) since the further subjects of the lower Valley were more or less out of sight beyond the alluvial fan that appears in the photograph. But I kept being intrigued by the low, dark hill on the flats below the similar hill on which I was standing. There is a row of them stretching from near the Devils Cornfield area up and across this alluvial fan. As the evening light transitioned towards post-sunset light I saw that the glow from clouds (a bit of which is visible in the distance above the Black Mountains) was lighting this hill and the surrounding flats in an interesting and colorful way.

But I had a little problem. I was still working a number of subjects and once and I really needed to keep shooting that 100-400. 100mm was still too long for this scene, but I didn’t have time to remove it and put on a shorter lens. I figured that I could simply change the camera to vertical orientation, very carefully level the tripod, and include the whole scene in four panning vertical frames that I could stitch together later. People often do this so that they can produce extremely high-resolution image, but that wasn’t my goal at all. In any case, it worked, and not only did I manage to get the shot that needed a wider lens, but as a bonus it is a very high-resolution shot.

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

Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise

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Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise
Mesquite Flat Dunes, Sunrise

Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light striking minor dunes on Mesquite Flat with Cottonwood Mountains wash and the Last Chance Range in the distance, Death Valley National Park.

These dunes are not too far from the main Mesquite Dunes near Stovepipe Wells – they are a bit further east from the better known tallest section of the dunes. The areas of lower dunes provide some very interesting shapes and textures on a smaller scale in some ways that those of the larger dunes. I photographed these with a long lens, shooting from a rise, at a point in time very shortly after the first morning light had struck the sand. The background hills, part of a very large alluvial fan at the base of the Cottonwood Mountains, were in the shadow of a cloud.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Hills and Sunrise Haze, Death Valley

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Hills and Sunrise Haze, Death Valley
Hills and Sunrise Haze, Death Valley

Hills and Sunrise Haze. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunrise light shines through morning haze to silhouette low hills in central Death Valley.

On the last morning of my late-March Death Valley shoot, I was on top of a low hill in roughly the middle of the Valley, not far from the “Devils Cornfield” area, mainly to photograph the Mesquite Dunes and the nearby transverse dunes against the backdrop of the Cottonwood Mountains. But this spot gave me a 360 degree panoramic view of a huge section of the central Valley, so while I waited for “just right” light on my intended subjects I also had time to see and photograph other subjects.

These low hills, mostly bare but sprinkled here and there with a few small plants or even a creosote bush or possibly a mesquite tree, were in the morning haze that sometimes settles in the bottom of the Valley before the daytime winds clear it out. The sun had just come over the Funeral Mountains to the east and was shining at a very low angle through this haze, so I pointed the camera (with a 400mm focal length lens!) almost straight into the sun (shading the lens with my hand) and made a few shots of these hills receding into the hazy distance across the Valley

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Email
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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains

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Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains
Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft and hazy late-afternoon light on Mesquite Dunes and lower Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

The color of the sand dunes of Death Valley changes radically at different times of the day, in different weather conditions, and even seasonally. Many of the photographs of these dunes – the “Mesquite Dunes” in the middle Valley near Stovepipe Wells – are made in the early morning or in the evening. At those times the dunes take on the colors of sunrise/sunset light (generally very warm yellow to golden colors) or the pre-dawn or (better yet) post-sunset light of the sky, which can include a range of colors from blues to pinks to purples and so on. Judging by photographs you might think that the dunes are brightly and intensely colorful. (Or black and white, but that’s a different story.)

Most of the time the coloration is quite different from what we see at the early and late “edges” of the day. The less saturated colors at other times of day can be a bit more complicated to shoot, but they can also create some wonderful subtle effects if you happen to look in the right place at the right time. Late in the afternoon on this early spring day, there was some haze in the atmosphere – perhaps from some blowing dust and/or some clouds and moisture that had been around earlier. As the sun drops at Mesquite Dunes, it goes behind mountains to the west well before actual sunset. When this happens, the dunes are gently back-lit by soft light from the western sky, and the backlit haze mutes the colors of the dunes and, even more, the distant slopes of the rugged Cottonwood Mountains.

My idea here was to isolate the undulating shapes of the softly lit dunes in front of the background of the very, very muted colors and shapes of the lower Cottonwood Mountains, which are obscured by haze. There is some color in this scene, but it is subdued and edges quite a ways towards pastels.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Email
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.