Tag Archives: mesquite

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

Photographer, Sand Dunes, Evening

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Photographer, Transverse Dunes, Evening - A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.
A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

Photographer, Sand Dunes, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone photographer at work among sand dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

This is a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” photograph – and, yes, there really is a photographer in this scene. There is not much to give you an accurate sense of the scale of the components of this scene, and there are even a few details that might throw you off. Hint: That bush near the upper left is a lot larger than you might imagine. If you look closely, I’m pretty certain that you can spot the photographer, but I won’t spoil the fun by telling you where to look.

These dunes extend over a large areas in Death Valley National Park, and I’ve come to find some of the smaller dunes of the park to present interesting relief among the closely spaced ripples and waves of sand, and late-day color variations that only get better after sunset. To make this photograph I used a long lens and found a vantage point that was elevated above the sand.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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

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.

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

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.