Tag Archives: mountains

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Diablo Range, Winter Sunset

April 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful winter sunset over the Diablo Range, seen from California’s San Joaquin Valley

It is rare for me to shoot a scene quite like this one, with the setting sun included in the frame. It was a sort of spontaneous thing. I had a very long lens on the camera since I was photographing geese and cranes in the evening light, and when I looked up and saw that the sun was setting right in the low point on the ridge of the Diablo Range I quickly grabbed my tripod and made a few exposures of this scene.

This time right around and just after sunset is what I think of as the magic hour here in this Valley between the Sierra and the Diablo Range. Much of the pre-sunset coming and going of the geese pauses and things seem to slow down. The wild color was only there for a brief moment, and only in this specific part of the sky right above the setting sun, where the low light reflected off the bottom of a high, thin cloud layer. A single bird (perhaps a hawk? is in the upper branches of the tree at far left, and some light reflects off of the surface of the ponds at this wildlife refuge.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Morning Haze, Death Valley

March 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Distant snow-covered peaks are barely visible across the vast space of Death Valley in hazy morning light

This photograph was made from Dantes View, high in the mountains along the eastern border of Death Valley itself, and with a commanding, panoramic view of a huge portion of the surrounding terrain and especially down into Death Valley and the Badwater area almost right beneath the peak. The view here looks roughly north or northwest, past the location of Furnace Creek and beyond the Mesquite Dunes area to the far northern end of the Valley and then beyond to distant snow-covered peaks.

I have written before that Dantes View has been a difficult place for me to photograph. At first glance, the location has a lot going for it. At about a mile above the Valley floor below, the views encompass a huge area of interesting terrain, ranging from the lowest reaches of Death Valley itself to the 11,000+” Telescope in the Panamint Range to other features so distant that they often fade into the haze. But for me these same features make it very difficult to pick out anything that can draw the larger components of the scene together. There have been times when I have gone there with the intention of photographing, gotten out, looked around, been impressed by the location, and made no photographs at all. This time I mostly shot details of the Valley using a very long lens, but I thought that the shadows of the passing clouds brought enough relieve to the uniformity of the Valley to make this photograph, which I hope conveys some sense of the scale of the place.

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

Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains

March 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Mesquite Dunes and the Cottonwood Mountains late on a hazy afternoon, Death Valley National Park, California

The Mesquite Dunes are a well-known icon of Death Valley and are often photographed in the early morning or around sunset. I made this photograph at a somewhat different time – late in the afternoon but well before the golden hour light of evening. The sun was still high enough to illuminate the tops of the dunes and even the sides away from the sun, and the afternoon haze made the atmosphere blue and obscured the rugged features of the Cottonwood Mountains beyond the dunes and across the Valley.

If you look closely enough, you can find a number of features that characterize this area of the valley. The foreground flats are “filled” with plants that grow a good distance apart from one another, apparently due to the limited water. The edge of the dunes spills over slightly into the gravelly flat but then rises quite high. Beyond the dunes, and faintly seen through the haze, a giant alluvial fan slants down from higher mountains to the left. (It sometimes surprises visitors to see how much the terrain in this very dry place has been shaped by water.) Beyond the sloping fan, the rugged Cottonwood Mountains, part of the Panamint Range, begin to rise to quite high peaks.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite, Mist, and Trees

February 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A momentary beam of sunlight illuminates a granite outcropping and trees against a backdrop of clouds surrounding the upper cliffs of Yosemite Valley

We had one day in the Valley and despite challenging weather conditions were determined to make photographs. I knew that it was likely to be cloudy, but there was also light rain (and snow at slightly higher elevations), making it a rather gray day. However, in some ways these can be among my favorite conditions to photograph here. When it is cloudy or stormy in the Valley, clouds can drift among the feature high up on the surrounding cliffs and peaks, and sometimes there can be fog and other kinds of interesting atmosphere right down in the Valley – and I feel that these conditions are both more interesting and more challenging that a classic “beautiful day” in the Valley. (Not that I won’t take one of those, too, if it turns out to be available.)

Looking for interesting subjects we headed west on Northside Drive and found clouds obscuring the face of El Capitan, blowing enough that they would momentarily reveal sections of the giant granite face. We stopped at one of the locations from which hordes of photographers would attempt to photograph Horsetail Fall later that evening and I made a few photographs of this foggy sight, but then I turned a long lens towards other sections of the steep terrain above the Valley, looking for sections where interesting things might happen as the clouds drifted around and occasional sun broke through. As I lined up a composition that included various diagonals from rocky prominences and cliffs rising above, the sun began to shine weakly through the clouds and light up the closest rock while those beyond remained mostly gray.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Diablo Range, Winter Sunset

Mesquite Dunes, Cottonwood Mountains

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