Tag Archives: national

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: People, Photographs: People In Landscape, Photographs: Photographers

Three Photographers, Evening Dunes

Image March 12, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three photographers deep within evening sand dunes.

In early March I had the opportunity to spend a few days back in Death Valley National Park. Although I was primarily there to meet up and camp with siblings, this was also a photographic opportunity. There were both pluses and minuses to the timing of this visit. Recent heavy rains and creating flooding everywhere, and many routes were closed by the flooding or wash-outs — there simply were quite a few places that one couldn’t go. At the same time, these are “special conditions” in this desert landscape, and there were quite a few unusual opportunities.

Once in the park I discovered that some friends from the Yosemite area were also their to make photographs. We managed to meet up on my second full day, and we combined forces to photograph Mesquite Dunes early one morning. Later I returned to this area of the Vally to photograph in fading light as clouds tried to clear. Right at sunset there was a break in the clouds just above the western horizon and brighter light came through to shine on the geography. I found myself a high place with a commanding view over a large swath of the landscape and began to photograph whichever areas momentarily picked up the light. As I looked down I spotted my three friends again, this time dwarfed by the large shapes of desert dunes.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Mount Dana

Image March 10, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mount Dana, against a sky full of summer thunder clouds.

This photograph comes from last summer, on a lovely mid-July day when I was slowly poking around a few locations near the eastern Yosemite boundary on a relatively early visit to the high country. You never know, from year to year, what you’ll find there in July. In a very snowy year this scene could still hold a lot of snow, but in 2018 the snowfall had been less impressive, and most of it was already gone. The creeks were still high and meadow grasses were coming up, with the promise of wildflowers soon to arrive.

The peak itself is on the park boundary, and the view here looks toward the side that is inside the park. However, my camera location was outside the park, in an area that has long intrigued me — for this view, for views back up to the crest north of Tioga Pass, and for some of the more intimate nearby views. It was a cloudy day, and alternative light and shadow moved across the landscape, changing the appearance from moment to moment.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Snag and Needles

Image September 26, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Detail of an old snag littered with a few needles

High in the Sierra Nevada, as you get close to the tree line, there are more and more of these old “snags” — the skeletal remnants of trees that died some time ago. In order to survive in such an environment, these trees must be very tough, and their forms given evidence of that. They often seem stunted and are twisted into remarkable shapes as they grow on and around rocks and boulders and slabs. They may survive for a long time, even as they sacrifice branches in to the elements. When they do die their wood lasts for decades. Living or dead, they sometimes seem to me to inhabit a space midway between geology and fauna, being as close to the rock as to more familiar green things.

As I have mentioned already, our location high in the eastern Sierra Nevada backcountry was in an area where the sun was blocked for hours after sunrise and for hours before sunset. In was mid-morning before any direct sunlight reached our camp and late afternoon when it left, and I could wander in the cold, soft light for hours making photographs… and freezing! I photographed this bit of an old snag in this softly shadowed blue-toned light.

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

Desert Ridges and Haze

Image September 11, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Layers of desert ridges extend into distant haze

Desert landscapes are, in some ways, what I think of as the most “pure” landscapes. Their aridity means that there is rarely much to obscure the actual geology of these places — no forests, no grassy meadows, few bodies of water. The landscape is laid bare.

The colors, textures, and patterns of rock and soil are revealed, and the changing light paints this landscape in remarkable ways. The colors change throughout the day depending upon the height of the sun, the color of surfaces reflecting the light, and the clarity of the sky. The atmosphere itself changes the landscape — crystal clear air reveals distant features as if they were close by, while air filled with blowing sand and dust obscures detail and focuses attention on larger elements of the scene.