Tag Archives: national

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Rock, Dusk

March 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on sandstone formations, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

On our first day in this part of southern Utah last October we settled into our primitive camp, hung out for a while, and then headed off to an area of beautifully formed sandstone in the late afternoon, where we planned to do our evening photography. When we arrived the sun was still well above the ridge to our west but its light was intermittently muted by thin clouds that softened the contrasts between light and shadow. For perhaps a couple of hours we worked this landscape of carved red rock, with its gullies, ridges, sand-filled flats, holes and every curving shape and texture you can imagine.

There was much to see, and after I photographed the most obvious subjects I continued to look and began to see less obvious features. As the sun dropped behind the ridge and shadows stretched across this area I first felt a kind of urgency to make photographs while the light was still good. I continued shooting right into the post-sunset dusk hour, when color came to the thin clouds and washed this landscape, already red from rocks and blue from haze, with intense reddish-purple light. I made a series of photographs in this area above a carved sandstone gully, and soon it was too dark to shoot any more. I/we looked up from our cameras, enjoyed the quiet for a few moments, then put on headlamps and found our way across rocks and back to where we started and then drove back to camp.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Bleached Plant, Sandstone, Shadows

March 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The skeleton of a bleached plant casts shadows across a sandstone slab

In the fall I spent some time making photographs in Utah, getting to a good number of locations, including some I returned to for more photography following previous visits. Partway through this trip I had plans to rendezvous with a group of friends (some new and some old) and photographers in a somewhat remote part of the state. We met, headed out, and spent the next few days camped “out there,” making photographs every day and visiting some very beautiful places.

On the first day of my meeting with this group we found a place to camp and began to settle in. That process took place pretty quickly, as all of us have spent a lot of time camping and we don’t need a lot of luxuries — in addition to friends we need food, a campfire, a place to sleep, and a spot by the fire for our chairs. So I soon found myself with a few hours of late afternoon free time between the camp chores and our evening shoot. I wandered off into nearby hills and eventually ended up on a sandstone bench with a bit of a view of the surrounding terrain. On top of this flat, dry, and nearly lifeless spot there were several plants that had tried to make a living here, setting down roots in tiny pockets of sandy soil and then growing horizontally across the rock. The first thing that attracted me was the stark contrast between the bleached plant and the red rock sandstone, but (as is always the case) the more I looked the more I saw. The curve of the white branch at the right edge of the frame is echoed by the similar upward curve of the eroded bit of darker rock on the left side, and a darker parallel version of the plant falls on the rock in the form of a shadow.

Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

March 15, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn aspen trees at the end of a meadow on the Kaibab Plateau

Back in the early autumn of 2014 I headed off to southern Utah for some significant time photographing — first on my own in the area around Kanab and points a bit east of there, then up to Capitol Reef to meet a friend for a few days, then out into a relatively off-the-grid area south of Escalante to photograph with another group of photographers, with a quick stop after that in the town of Boulder, and then west to Zion to meet family members for a few days. Whew! On my first day in Utah I ended up at a motel in Kanab, where I settled in by late afternoon. I originally figured it would be too late for photography, but I found myself with a few hours late in the day and no plans made. I looked at a map and saw the road heading south toward the north rim of Grand Canyon (where I had never been before — it is a long story) and thought, “what the heck, I’ll go to Grand Canyon!”)

I headed out of Kanab with a very amorphous plan to follow the road south, perhaps getting to the rim by sunset if I was lucky. I crossed the valley and began the climb up to the Kaibab plateau where, to my surprise, I found late season aspens along mountain meadows that still had some color. In the dusk light I stopped — I couldn’t help myself! — and made a few photographs of these slender, tall, and straight trees against the backdrop of bare aspens and the conifer forest beyond. (I eventually did get to the rim… but it was already deep in dusk when I arrived.)

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

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

March 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single cottonwood tree lies among dry winter grasses in a Yosemite Valley meadow.

This has been and continues to be a historically dry year in California and especially in the Sierra. More concerning, it is the third such year in a row. In a more typical year — and may those return soon! — the location where I made this photograph would be very wet and perhaps even snow-covered on a day like the one when I visited.

We headed out into the Valley very early on this morning. It was the sort of day when you might hope to find some ground fog in the Valley meadows. We had no luck at the first two meadows we checked, but the third did have a very tenuous and shallow layer of fog, so we stopped. I wandered out into the dry and slightly frosty meadow, and as I did the last of the fog dissipated. As I looked for compositions among the waves of dormant grasses I began to notice that here and there were reddish-brown heart-shaped leaves left over from the autumn cottonwoods.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: national

Red Rock, Dusk

Bleached Plant, Sandstone, Shadows

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

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