Tag Archives: Mountain

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California

Petroglyphs

3 Comments
Petroglyphs - Petroglyphs on a rock face overlooking desert terrain
Petroglyphs on a rock face overlooking desert terrain

Petroglyphs. Death Valley National Park, California. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Petroglyphs on a rock face overlooking desert terrain.

Encountering these very old and very mysterious traces of people who lived in this desert terrain many, many years ago is always a special experience. Perhaps you have read the following story here before, but I think of it every time I encounter these things. Well over a decade ago I was camped in a place in Death Valley National Park that lies somewhere between popular and the anonymous wild spaces far out in the back areas of the park. I was with a group of other people. In the morning I wandered away from the place where we were camped. I crossed a wash and walked up onto the base of a great alluvial fan, found a suitable “sitting rock,” and just sat there for a while taking in the immense space and silence. I happened to look down at the rocky ground and I an oddly shaped rock caught my attention. I’m no expert on these things, but it seemed completely clear to me that this rock had been shaped by human hands. (I later came to understand that it was probably a “knife,” perhaps one designed for scraping.)

At the moment I saw and then picked up and held this rock, the place was transformed from a semi-wilderness of rock and scattered plants into a very different sort of thing – a place that had been the home of people, many years before I sat there on my rock. My thoughts turned from the landscape around me to try to imagine the person who had created and held this rock – who was this person? what was it like to live in such a place in such a time? what had happened to them? I returned the rock to the desert floor and walked back to my camp.

The petroglyphs in the photograph are located in another place in the park, and I have visited and photographed them more than once. These are perhaps the most precious and among the most fragile things in this desert, which is why I never write about the specifics of their locations. (I also have photographs of petroglyphs that have been defiled by thoughtless morons.) If you know where these are, let’s keep it to ourselves, OK?

The first time I photographed these examples of rock art, I simply shot them straight on so that the shapes were as clear and large as possible. Since then I had been thinking of trying to photograph them in a way that might reveal them in the context of the larger surroundings – perhaps as the person or people who made them might have seen the place.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake

Leave a comment
Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake - Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.
Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

This past week we had the opportunity to do something that we’ll probably not get to do again – drive over Tioga Pass through Yosemite National Park in the middle of January. Until this year, the latest the road had been open was December 31. This year it was still open on January 17, though scheduled to close as I write this. It has been a very unusual weather year in many parts of California, including the Sierra. While the season began with earlier and heavier than usual snow storms way back in early October, this promising start to the snow season was just a tease. A month or so later, the tap was turned off and there was little rain through the end of the calendar year and on into January of 2012.

So with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity about to end with the promise of snow this week, we drove up the night before and then headed over Tioga Pass Road to Lee Vining and back, stopping frequently along the way. The weather in the morning was a bit of a surprise. I knew that a weak weather system – that had not brought any rain – was departing the Sierra, but we were surprised when we encountered very light snow flurries as we drove up Crane Flat Road to the junction with highway 120, and this continued as we started up Tioga Pass Road. When we arrived at Siesta Lake we found it partly sunny but still trying to snow just a bit. I set up to make a photograph of some trees in cloud-softened light, but as soon as I was ready to shoot the light died! I waited for a while, but finally decided that the light wasn’t returning. I decided to wander over to this small lake and see what I could find along the shoreline – and I found these dormant grasses, half-submerged in winter ice, with a sprinkling of snowflakes on the surface of the ice.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | 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

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

Leave a comment
Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning -Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.
Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Sometimes I don’t know at the time of exposure whether or not a photograph might end up as a color or a black and white image. However, I saw this scene as being black white as I made the photograph. It was made just a bit later than a photograph of a similar scene that I posted recently, and by this time the intense dawn color was gone and replaces by more subdued tones and far less saturated color. However, by now the early sun light was beginning to directly strike the lower slopes of the foreground canyon.

The large canyon in the foreground at the base of the two dark ridges is part of a complex sometimes called Trail Canyon. At one time there was a road up the canyon to the area near where I made the photograph – from what I hear it provided access to a mine down in the canyon. Some years ago the road washed out in several places, and the park’s policy now is to mostly let these old tracks simply slide into oblivion, thus allowing the terrain to revert to wilderness. This canyon, like many along the lower reaches of the major mountain ranges of the park, intrigues me with its huge gravel fan and in the way that it breaches the incredibly rugged mountains of the Panamint Range.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | 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, Eureka Valley, Morning

2 Comments
Dunes, Eureka Valley, Morning - Morning light and haze at the Eureka Valley Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.
Morning light and haze at the Eureka Valley Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

Dunes, Eureka Valley, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. January 6. 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light and haze at the Eureka Valley Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California.

This seems like a typical desert scene, right? Hot, arid, a bit of summer haze… It may look that way, but it was 28 degrees when I made this photograph!

At the tail end of my early January photography visit to Death Valley National Park I went north from the Ubehebe Crater area on the long gravel route up to the remote Eureka Valley Dunes, which are described as the tallest dunes in the United States, being nearly 700 feet tall. I decided to visit here at the end of my trip for several reasons – first, believe it or not, I had not been to this major feature in the park before. Second, because the trans-Sierra passes were still open in the strange weather year, by going out the north end of the park I figured I could shorten my drive back to the Bay Area a bit.

I arrived the night before, just in time to shoot a little bit as the last light came and went. Then I spent a very cold night “camping” in the back of my car. I was up reasonably early, but it was so cold that it was very hard to get out of the sleeping bag. Finally I did so, and I put on all my warm clothes and marched around the camping area trying to warm up a bit. Finally, after the morning sun topped the tall ridge to the east, the light arrived and my world began to warm up a bit. Eventually I packed up and started my trip back out to civilization. But first I wanted to stop a ways out in the valley and do some long shots back towards the dunes. This is one of those photographs, made from a ways down the road using a long lens.

Somewhat surprisingly, when I finally got back in my car a bit after 9:00 a.m. and long after the sun arrived, I finally thought to check the outside temperature on my car’s thermometer. At about 9:15, out in the valley, and in the sun… the temperature had finally risen… to 28 degrees!

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | 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.