Tag Archives: monochrome

Photographs: Abstract, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dunes, Sky

April 11, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sand dunes, shadows, and morning clouds

Another photograph from another morning among the dunes. Because of the daily wind and dust storms during this visit to Death Valley National Park, we had many opportunities to find sand dunes with no or few signs of other visitors besides those creatures that actually live there. We approached the dunes in a variety of ways during this visit, and I photographed them almost daily, sometimes more than one. But I always came at them from a direction that wasn’t the most popular or best known. This time I came around on a looping route from a side and swing around behind some low, sandy areas to photograph in early morning light.

There is a lot to see in the dunes, and I had a few ideas as we arrived at the edge of the dunes. (While I usually don’t begin with a specific photograph it mind, I often have some general conceptual ideas I want to explore, and I keep my eyes open for subjects that could work along those lines.) I started with some old dry playa textures in front of the valley floor leading of toward distant mountains as the sun rose, and then I climbed some short dunes to look for interesting curving shapes and conjunctions of lines and subjects. I photographed some creosote plants against sand patterns and eventually moved deeper into the dunes, seeing the rippling textures of wind-blown sand draped across hills and valleys. I stopped to photograph a bit of sand texture straight on, and when I looked up and to the side I saw this series of curving horizontal lines with the cloudy sky above and beyond.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Death Valley, Morning Clouds

April 7, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun shines through atmospheric haze and clouds above Death Valley

Death Valley is a very big place, and getting to locations sometimes requires a lot of driving. Photographing there often requires a very early wakeup call, and I’m often on my way to some location in the park well before first light. Leaving during darkness, often for a place very different from where I’m staying, means I have to make some educated (and not so educated) guesses about what conditions might be like many miles away and at sometimes very different elevations. As result, I often do not know precisely what conditions I’ll find when I arrive at an early morning location.

Such was the case on this morning. The destination was more than 6000′ feet higher than where we were staying and many miles away. In the past I’ve arrived at this spot to find very strong winds and very cold temperature. This time the temperature wasn’t so bad but we did have winds. Just before arrival at the final destination the sky lit up briefly, so we halted and photographed from that location before continuing on… and watching the light die as the sun rose. We consoled ourselves — we had caught a brief bit of good light and it was a beautiful spot to be in, photographs or not. Since we were there we went ahead and made a few photographs, and as we did so the conditions began to improve in somewhat dramatic fashion. The earliest hint of the afternoon’s upcoming dust storm appeared in the distant milky haze through which beams of light passed. Higher clouds began to collect, and dramatic light cut across the face of the arid mountains below us.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Fog, Water, Island

April 2, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog obscures the view of a wetland island

This is one of a pair of similar photographs I made in this spot on a lovely dense fog morning out in the winter Central Valley. (The other is simpler and doesn’t include the foreground plants.) We had arrived quite a bit earlier and had already done a circuit of the gravel road that encircles the location, and we were now on our second loop. Believe it or not, the fog had become a lot less thick by the time I made the photograph!

Imagine that everything is still, but that the sounds of birds are everywhere — a combination of visual stillness but audio tumult in every direction. As I watched this little island the fog continued to thin and thicken, and at times it almost became invisible. Shortly after I made the photograph the clearing began in earnest and the beaks began to develop in the shallow tule fog.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Alpine Pond, Evening

March 23, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening reflections in a boulder-strewn alpine pond, Sequoia National Park

This pack trip, now almost a decade behind me, was a different sort of trip in several ways. We began on the east side of the range in a high valley south of Mount Whitney. This was in an area that we had visited in the past, and on one occasions I spent several days going up and down an unmaintained pass until we finally all got together and climbed a nearby 14,000′ peak. On the trip where I made the photograph we started out at the same trailhead but then skirted a bit south to cross the crest on a more popular trail. A bit further along to the west we left the main trail to visit a nearby lake, found a cross-country route out of its cirque, walked up a long valley to another lake, and camped there. I made the photograph on the evening of our arrival, looking back at tall ridges lining the valley we had ascended to get here.

There rest of the trip was unusual and special, too. On the next morning we skirted the lake and then headed up to find an unmarked route over a steep pass, dropping down abruptly from its summit into a long granite valley with several lakes. A day later we arrived at the usual west side route towards Mount Whitney. We stopped for lunch and moved on, heading north on the John Muir Trail. Eventually we crossed one of my favorite high spots along this trail and then descended to the junction with the trail over Shepherds Pass. We hung out in this area for a few days, investigating some more remote areas of the Upper Kern drainage before returning to this spot and then heading out over Shepherd Pass.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: monochrome

Dunes, Sky

Death Valley, Morning Clouds

Winter Fog, Water, Island

Alpine Pond, Evening

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