Tag Archives: mountains

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

Spring Oaks and Blue Sky

May 1, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

New spring growth on oak trees against perfect blue sky, Castle Rock State Park, California.

This is a simple photograph of a group of oak trees starting to get spring leaves with a deep blue spring sky in the background. I made the photograph along a trail just past Goat Rock at the Castle Rock State Park along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. As I walked along this trail I had been looking down, trying to find potential photographs of the many wildflowers along this hillside – but without a lot of success, given that the late morning hour was making the lighting quite challenging. I happened to look up as I continued on the trail and the silhouettes of the group of trees caught my attention, along with the juxtaposition of the bright colors of the new growth against the color of the sky

This has been a wetter and colder winter in the San Francisco Bay Area than we have had for a few years. Even though the calendar says we are well into spring, the weather has continued to be (what, in California passes for) winter-like, with rain storms still coming in from the Pacific. However, this morning felt like the first real spring day of the year with bright sun and warm temperatures.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 35mm
ISO 100, f/11, 1/80 second

keywords: castle rock, state, park, santa cruz, mountains, california, usa, north america, blue, sky, perfect, leaves, yellow, gold, new, spring, season, trunk, branch, silhouette, nature, landscape, scenic, travel, morning, light, pattern, grove, stock, plant, flora, foliage

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

Salt Flats Near Badwater, Evening

April 13, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white vertical format photograph of evening on the salt flats of Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, California.

Yes, I’m still mining the Death Valley photographs from my late March trip. And there are more to come… :-)

This photograph was made in evening light on the salt flats of Badwater Basin, not far from the “official” Badwater area – but far enough away that there were only a couple other photographers out here enjoying the solitude and the beautiful evening light. A few weeks earlier this area had been flooded by unusually heavy rains in Death Valley. From all appearances (and from photographic evidence that I’ve seen) the photographers who were first on the scene had to do a bit of wading to get out onto the salt flats. Some of them were rewarded for their efforts with wonderful and unusual images, including reflections of the Panamint range in the circular pools between the polygons of raised salt.

By the time I arrived the area was no longer flooded, though it was clear that the playa beneath the drying salt crust was still wet. In places some of the water appeared in cracks and in other spots walking on the salt felt a lot like walking on winter pond ice. During the flooding, the usually tall ridges between the salt “polygons” seem to have dissolved. Typically they are perhaps up to a few inches tall and contain large cracks. At the time I arrived, the counter had apparently been set back to zero – and the salt surface was almost completely flat, though it is obvious that the polygon outlines were still visible and beginning to rise a bit. The vertical ridge leading away from the camera position in the lower portion of the frame is a good example.

I went with black and white in this rendition since the sky had not really lit up yet – in other words, color wasn’t necessarily the main feature of the scene. I also liked what I could do with the clouded sky and the distant ridge in black and white.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 35mm
ISO 100, f/16, 1/25 second

keywords: salt, flat, polygon, pattern, landscape, nature, geology, hills, mountains, sky, dark, clouds, evening, dusk, sunset, haze, atmosphere, light, shadow, badwater, basin, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, travel, scenic, black and white, monochrome, texture, curve, stock

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

Eroded Terrain Near Natural Bridge Canyon

April 10, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Rugged and eroded terrain near the entrance to Natural Bridge Canyon in morning light at Death Valley National Park, California.

Natural Bridge Canyon is located at the foot of the Amargosa Range Black Hills just a short distance north of the popular Badwater area. As is typical of many of the canyon entrances in Death Valley, the approach is by leaving the main road paralleling the edge of the Valley and driving up a large alluvial fan on a gravel road towards the hills. The road ends and the canyon quickly narrows.

This photograph was made along this gravel approach road and shows a bit of the fan in the foreground, the cliffs alongside the was in the middle distance, and beyond that the convoluted and colorful strata of the lower section of the mountain range, here with low-angle back light from the morning sun coming from the other side of the mountains. This photograph also shows something that I found remarkable on this visit, namely the incredible profusion of plant life that was coming to live in the wake of some unusually heavy rain fall earlier in the season. During normal years and during most of the year even in wet years you’ll see almost no green at all on terrain like this aside from a few small and isolated bushes. But on this late-March visit there was plant life springing up everywhere. When I looked closely I could find a fringe of green almost everywhere. Here, not only is there obvious growth in the gravel of the wash at the bottom of the frame, but there is a fringe of green along the edges of the cliff and even in the far distance on the higher slopes.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 73mm
ISO 200, f/13, 1/40 second

keywords: death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, scenic, travel, nature, desert, rugged, erosion, eroded, mountains, hill, cliff, gully, wash, pink, strata, layer, green, plant, growth, spring, rock, morning, light, natural, bridge, canyon, landscape, nature, stock, plants, rock, gravel, red, black, amargosa

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

Salt Flats and Sunset Clouds – Near Badwater

April 6, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Sunset clouds above the patterned salt flats near Badwater, Death Valley National Park, California.

This photograph was made in the evening at the “secret” spot on the salt flats just south of Badwater. Reports and photographs from this location a couple weeks ago indicated that it had been flooded by earlier heavy rains, but by the time of my visit there was little standing water left here, with the exception of a few open spots (one seen in the middle distance on the salt flats) – though it did appear that the flats might still be wet beneath the salt crust. Walking on this was an odd experience that reminded me a bit of walking on newly frozen winter ice. The appearance of the salt flats was quite changed by the water. Typically the ridges between the flat “polygon” sections of the salt are more distinct, being as tall as a few inches and sometimes almost seeing to break over one another like the edges of ice floes. But at this stage the flats are almost, well, flat.

Shooting this scene in the evening often provides a few technical challenges. In the past I’ve shot from a lower camera position in order to get a closer view of the salt. This time I decided to place the camera bit higher so that I could capture a larger expanse of the salt flat texture. Another issue is the color of the salt. We “know” that salt is white, and when one walks on the playa it registers as white to the eyes/mind. But if you observe carefully – or look at a photograph later – you find out that this salt is anything but white, mostly because it is illuminated entirely by the open sky and therefore picks up the sky coloration. When the sky is clear the salt can become so blue that corrections are needed, in my opinion, during post-processing. On this evening the blue was not as pronounced since the colorful clouds balanced it out to some extent. A third issue is the tremendous dynamic range of the scene, ranging from some very bright sky below the clouds near the left side of the frame, through the much less brightly-lit salt flat, to the very dark foothills on the horizon at the right. In order to manage this I had to do two things. First, instead of using a graduated neutral density filter to lighten the foreground and control sky brightness, I made two exposures one stop apart and combined them in post. Secondly, I used layers to separately adjust sections of the image, primarily differentiating between the salt (which need to be lightened up a bit) and the sky (where the brightest areas needed to be controlled).

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite: 1/6 second and 0.3 second

keywords: badwater, salt, flats, polygon, pattern, playa, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, evening, dusk, sunset, cloud, colorful, pink, orange, blue, sky, landscape, nature, light, travel, scenic, geology, mountains, stock

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