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Lake Manly Shoreline

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Lake Manly Shoreline
“Lake Manly Shoreline” — From the shoreline of Lake Manly to distant desert mountains under morning clouds.

A spectacular cloud deck floated above Death Valley on this winter morning. While the clouds were a bit too thick to let brilliant sunrise colors develop, they created a very dramatic sky and its reflection on the surface of Lake Manly. The photograph looks north across the lake from its salty southern shoreline.

In other photographs of this subject I have tried to to fill the frame with sky and reflecting water. In this case I decided to include some of the salt-crusted shoreline of the lake in the foreground, and I used a wide angle lens in order to include more of the scene, and especially the sky.

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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: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Tule Fog Tree

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Tule Fog Tree
“Tule Fog Tree” — Branches of a tree are silhouetted against glowing Central Valley tule fog.

I have seen some very thick fog during my time photographing winter birds in California’s Central Valley, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it thicker than it was on this January morning. It was so thick that I pretty much had to give up on photographing birds — although I could hear them, I could not see them in in the pea soup fog!

The photograph gives a pretty good idea of the visibility. The details of the tree, only feet away from my camera position, are already largely muted and reduced to a silhouette. Beyond that the world simply… disappears. For those who may wonder, this is a color photograph! (Also, the word “tule” is pronounced TOO-lee, not like “tool.”)

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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

Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky

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Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky
“Lake Manly, Mountains, and Sky” — Desert mountains reflected in Lake Manly under morning sky.

I am always looking for simple, minimalist forms in the desert landscape. The lack of vegetation presents the landscape unadorned, and the shapes of the rugged features can acquire an abstract quality. Here the mirrored forms of the Black Mountains form a wedge shape that cuts into a blue landscape of sky and its reflection in Lake Manly.

Water in Lake Manly presents even more possibilities along these lines. In more typical conditions this photograph would be impossible. Instead of filling the frame with the sky and its reflection, the lower third would be a very dry salt flat — interesting, for sure, but entirely different than the water-reflected mirror image of the mountains and sky.

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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

Panamint Sky

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Panamint Sky
“Panamint Sky” — Morning winter sky above the Panamint Range and Lake Manly.

Lake Manly, the ephemeral lake that appears in Death Valley’s Badwater Basin in unusually wet seasons, is gradually shrinking once again. It was very large in early 2025, and again quite large early this year. It is starting to dry out and it will likely begone soon. For now though, it is still impressive, especially if you stand at its edge early in the morning, and doubly so when clouds fill the sky.

I chose black and white for this photograph of the lake because monochromegives me a great deal of interpretive freedom, in many way s more so than with color. As a starting point, black and white never can claim to be an accurate representation of the world of colors, and this frees us from notions that a photograph must always aspire to look like what we saw. In this case, monochrome allows me to draw attention to this remarkable winter desert sky.

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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.