Tag Archives: monochrome

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

Sea of Sand

April 20, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Overlapping sand dune patterns, morning

On the last day in Death Valley this spring we were planning to head off to the Los Angeles area in the morning, but I decided I wanted to photograph one more time before departing. Although I really wanted to sleep in, after many days of rising very early, I decided to get up early one more time and head back to the dunes alone for one final bit of photography. I headed out before dawn and arrived at a location I had been to before, parked the car, hoisted a backpack and tripod, and headed out across the playa toward a section of dunes where I was reasonably certain I would be able to photograph alone. The distances are always deceiving, and the playa walk took much more than the ten minutes one might guess that it would take if unfamiliar with these places. Eventually I came to the low dunes that I had been aiming for, and I began to look for places where I could make sand fill the frame.

The dunes are deceiving on other ways, too. You might imagine that they are on the march, being pushed along by winds. The wind does move sand — and it was blowing around my feet on this morning — but overall the dune forms are actually quite stable. Sometimes these active looking yet stable features make me think of a sort of stop motion ocean, with waves and crests and valley mostly frozen — a stopped landscape mirroring the active surface of water. The patterns here range from small (the little ripples in the foreground) to quite large (the overlapping crests marching into the distance.) I worked this scene and others like it for an hour, and then it was time to leave — a walk back across the playa back to my vehicle, and then the long drive out of the desert.

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

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Morning

April 18, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

When I go to Death Valley I usually have a long list of places I want visit — ridges, canyons, playas, trails, and more. Even when I am there for a week, I usually run out of time before I run out of places. Perhaps for this reason I have sometimes not given enough of my time to the dunes. I have photographed them quite a few times, but they often end up being one thing on the agenda that is full of other subjects. However, on this recent trip I visited the dunes much more, walking out into them on three occasions and photographing them from greater distances, too. I photographed them at more or less all times of the day, and in conditions ranging from clear sky to clearing storms and even blowing dust.

I made this photograph on a morning when a weather front was moving past, leaving some clouds in its wake above the Amargosa range along the east side of the valley. We began photographing before dawn, and worked through the rapidly changing light as the sun rose above the mountains. Clouds periodically interrupted the light, but this meant that from moment to moment almost any kind of light was possible — full direct sun, light muted by thin clouds, the soft light from overcast — and that different light often appeared at different locations in the scene. When I saw and composed this photograph the light was initially very soft, but by the time I made this last exposure the sun was beginning to come out from behind clouds and highlight the textures, curves, and lines of the sand, and the play of light and shadow.

Leave a comment or question using the form. (If you are reading this on the home page, click the article title to see the full article and the comment form.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Desert Mountains, Morning Haze

April 13, 2016 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

This is another “take” on roughly the same scene I shared in another recent photograph, also in black and white. When I made the photograph I was already thinking of it as a black and white image, and it obviously has ended up that way, more or less as planned. I was already familiar with the rugged foreground mountains from previous visits, but the light and atmospheric conditions on this visit were unique. The sky was fairly cloudy, though the ceiling was breaking up a bit, allowing light beams to break through. The atmosphere was extremely hazy. The positive aspect of this is that the light shining through it almost glowed. (In fact, that was probably what first attracted me to the scene.) The somewhat negative aspect is that the haze was the harbinger of a tremendous dust storm that would arrive later in the day.

The black and white rendition represents the result of a sort of pre-visualization. To my way of thinking, “pre-visualization” can mean a range of things. At one end of the spectrum it could mean almost literally “seeing” the finished photograph before making the exposure. In this case I knew I wanted the hazy light beams to glow, that I wanted to retain the dark mass of the foreground mountains, and that the final result would be black and white. But I don’t want to imply more certainty than I actually had. Despite my decent idea of where I was going, I did not know for sure what the exact best outcome would be and, in fact, I made some varied compositions and exposures. On a side note, although we didn’t quite realize it just yet, the haze that made the light so beautiful came from the first dust from dust storms that were building all around the area.

Leave a comment or question using the form. (If you are reading this on the home page, click the article title to see the full article and the comment form.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: monochrome

Sea of Sand

Creosote Bush, Dunes, Morning

Desert Mountains, Morning Haze

Dunes, Sky

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