Tag Archives: mountains

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

Kit Fox Hills

April 8, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on the Kit Fox HIlls, Death Valley

This photograph was a bit of a lucky catch. I had gone to an elevated location where I had a more commanding view of a wide section of Death Valley, but late-afternoon clouds had drifted in above the Cottonwood Mountains to the west and the light ranged from filtered to “blah.” I try to “read” the clouds to predict what may come, and my reading on the conditions was that a small gap between the bottom of the cloud bank and the top of the mountains would produce a brief bit of good light just before the sun dropped beyond the peaks. These predictions don’t always pan out, but this one did. The light first appeared a great distance away at the upper end of the valley, but soon worked its way south across the Grapevine Mountains and then flowed across the low Kit Fox Hills.

I’ve been intrigued by this small row of furrowed hills for a long time. Their coloration and patterns let them stand out from the less differentiated material of the washes above and below them. I did a bit of reading about them during this recent trip, and I understand that they are a remnant of a very old earthquake fault along the west side of the valley. (There are fault zones along the sides of Death Valley, separating the rising mountains from the valley, which is largely filled with material washed down from the mountains.)

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Nature

Desert Mountains

April 7, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Desert mountains rise above Death Valley in evening light

This view takes me back to something I believe I understood the very first time I saw Death Valley. It was close to twenty years ago, and I had gone there as an adult with a group of middle school and high school kids who were planning a long hike in the park. (The event did not come off quite as planned, but that is a long story that I’ll have to tell some other time.) We arrived at the park boundaries after dark and made camp at the first possible place, a small and mostly unimproved campsite right off the road between the pass we had come over and the valley itself. In the dark I could tell little about the place: it was warm, the wind was blowing, I didn’t see much in the way of plant life. We climbed into tents and sleeping bags for the night.

Early the next morning I crawled out and got my first view of Death Valley. There’s nothing quite like suddenly coming upon your first view of such an iconic place. I recall the specific view even today, looking down across massive alluvial fans, across the valley itself, and at these rugged and bare hills and mountains on the far side so many miles away. This photograph, made from a different location this spring, includes a small section of the scene I looked at back then. It also illustrates one of my strongest impressions of Death Valley — it is a place where the geology is laid bare with virtually no forests or water to obstruct the land itself, even more so than above timberline where there are still lakes and where snow may linger all year. It is also a place, perhaps to our surprise, in which one of the largest factors shaping the landscape has been… water!

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

Dunes, Mountains, Haze

April 5, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon winds and blowing sand soften the contours of sand dunes and desert mountains

For us, the drive to Death Valley from the San Francisco Bay Area is always a long one, even when we break it into sections as we did on this trip. We came through Trona and up the Panamint Valley, then following the newly reopened Wild Rose Canyon Road up into the mountains. Along the way to made a few stops in this range, and finally ended up in Death Valley itself in the middle afternoon. After getting settled in following the drive it is very tempting to just be lazy! However, we were there (mostly) to make photographs, so we got to work.

For me, the first photography of almost any trip amounts, to some extent, to a sort of warm-up exercise. I may (or may not) have a particular photograph or subject in mind, but it is important to get the camera out, head into the field, and start making photographs right away, if for no other reason than to “prime the pump” for the rest of the visit. We we headed to the dunes, stopping at a place where few others go, shouldered tripods, packs and cameras, and headed out to see what we could find. I had my sights on some low dunes where various vegetation grows, but along the way I looked toward the more distant higher dunes and spotted this beautiful backlight and haze as wind began to blow sand into the air from the dune ridges.

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

Tufa Hill, Twilight

April 4, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Twilight and evening clouds above a tufa hill in the Death Valley landscape

A day or two earlier than this I had been out in a location not far from this spot at the end of the day, hoping to photograph end-of-day color. Just before sunset the sky went “dead” — some haze, no color in the sky, and a generally flat-looking landscape. I was about to pack up when “someone” (thanks, Patty!) pointed out, perhaps more than once, that I really should stick around “just in case.” And, yes, within moments a dull, gray cloud began to pick up pink tones, and before long sufficient color appeared to produce an interesting photograph. I know not to “pack before it is black,” but I need reminding from time to time!

The evening when I made the photograph seen here was challenging in many ways, and it began with perhaps even less promise than that evening a few days earlier. This time the sun went behind clouds to the west as it descended, turning the light completely flat. On top of that, the wind was absolutely howling, and sand was just beginning to blow. If I hadn’t had that reminder a couple of evenings earlier, I would have been out of there! But I stuck around, switching out the long lens that I had been using for a wider lens used for this photograph, and when the post-sunset, early twilight glow and color began I was ready. (A note regarding the title of this photograph. I’ve wondered about the source of these fantastical hills on the floor of Death Valley. As near as I can tell, they were formed many thousands of years ago, at the bottom of what was then a giant prehistoric lake.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Kit Fox Hills

Desert Mountains

Dunes, Mountains, Haze

Tufa Hill, Twilight

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