Tag Archives: north america

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

Devil’s Cornfield

March 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Early morning light slants across the arrow weed plants of the Devil’s Cornfield area of Death Valley National Park

For the record, while I have no evidence either way regarding the role of the devil in creating this terrain, there is definitely no corn growing in this field! The plant is known as “arrowweed” (or arroweed or arrow weed), and the tall shapes are apparently formed as the sand erodes from around the roots.

This spot is one of several in Death Valley that have been hard for me to see as photographs. (Other “challenges” include the Devil’s Golf Course – which mostly looks like crusty, dried mud to me – and Salt Creek – which I’ve mostly visited at the times of day when the light hasn’t been idea.) I came close once before with a closer view of the plants that revealed their actual color a bit more and which placed them in front of a backdrop of more distant barren mountains. This photograph certainly doesn’t provide a strong center of visual interest, but I like the sense of the plants leading off into the distance, the angles of the blue shadows, and the contrasting warm colors of the plants in near golden-hour light.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Salt Flat Patterns

February 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Detail of a section of Death Valley salt flats as seen from Dantes View

Death Valley is often not quite what it seems to be. Repeat visits and views from different perspectives – far away, very close up, from above – begin to reveal things that you might not see at first. From next to and on the salt flats in the lowest section of the Valley, you see a very desolate terrain – one of the most non-human terrains I know. Here, well below sea level, there are places that seem completely inhospitable and alien, landscapes of caked salt, worked and sharp-edged salt and dried mud, seeps of shallow water, occasional odd plants, and landscape that often seems to go on almost endlessly the same way. But just as looking more closely reveals surprises (such as living creatures in those millimeters-deep pools of salty water), the view from overhead shows patterns that cannot be readily seen up close.

This photograph was made from the summit of Dantes View. This high point along the eastern side of the valley is close to a mile above the Valley floor. The view can often be panoramic, stretching for tremendous distances in almost all directions, blocked only by the higher peaks of the Panamint Range to the west and a few other high points nearby. Although Dantes View is one of the best known “iconic” locations in the park, I have a complicated relationship with the place. First of all, I seem to attract awful weather when I go there, perhaps because I tend to do so in the season that is winter elsewhere in the state. Not too long ago I attempted to drive to the summit on a winter day and was turned back by a snow storm perhaps a half mile from the end of the road. In addition, it has been hard for me to warm up to the place as a photographic subject. In some ways, there is almost just too much in the view for me to see how to isolate a photograph out of that detailed immensity. I dealt with that here by using a very long lens and restricting my view to a small section of the valley floor, without much context of surrounding terrain, which I think produces a photograph that allows the features in this frame to be seen as abstractions.

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

Foggy Marsh, Dawn Light

January 6, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light begins to illuminate high clouds above the fog over a California Central Valley marsh

Have I mentioned how much I love fog and pre-dawn and post-sunset light? I guess I have… :-) I made this photograph on New Years Day 2013, shortly after arriving at the San Joaquin location in near darkness to meet a group of friends and fellow “wild goose chasers.” I can hardly imagine a better way to greet the new year than to join like-minded friends in such a place!

This was a day of surprises of various sorts. A painter showed up to join our photography-centric little band! We took a midday break to go see a movie. Although they were too far away to see clearly in the early morning haze, huge numbers of cranes arrived just after sunset. A solitary flock of white pelicans surprised us with an unexpected fly-over at one point. And the light and atmosphere were about impossible to predict. It was cold and seemed very clear on the way to our location, but as we arrived I could see hints of fog forming above this wet and cold area. Just before dawn it was quite hazy and gray, providing neither perfectly clear air nor the evocative and mysterious atmosphere of thick tule fog. But as sometimes happened, as the sky became lighter at sunrise, the brighter clouds and sky above the low elevation murk began to reveal itself, much as a hidden theatrical set may become visible behind a scrim. We stopped at the spot where I made this photograph because we could barely see a very large flock of (hundreds or, more likely, thousands) of sandhill cranes across the pond near the levee next to the trees. We stood around waiting for the birds to fly our direction, which they mostly did not do. But as we waited I began to see a bit of color and definition come to the higher clouds far above the low fog.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Gated Doorway, Wall

August 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Gated entryways and exterior walls, San Francisco.

As an Official Aficionado of Geometry, I found this more or less nondescript front of some San Francisco housing fascinating. The location is nothing special, being perhaps a few blocks up from the touristy Fishermans Wharf are and down an anonymous side street that I happened to turn onto for reasons that I can no longer recall. At street level, the walls are less walls than places to contain other things: gated entry-ways to apartments, garage doors, windows and so on. Little space is left empty.

The shapes include lots of vertical and horizontal lines and almost nothing (aside from the edges of the metal “thing” above the central gate and a bit of the concrete next to the garage door) that isn’t moving in one of those two directions. The central gate of rust colored metal dominates the scene. While I imagine that behind the gate is someone’s nice, comfortable home, the gate itself reminds me of something I might expect to see in a prison! To the left is another security gate, thought its bars are horizontal. There are a couple of surprising bits of color, too. The red at the bottom of the main gate, which I assume is there for the safety of people who might trip on that bit of a step, is matched by the bright red of the small extended window that is just barely intruding into the upper left corner of the frame.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north america

Devil’s Cornfield

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Salt Flat Patterns

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Foggy Marsh, Dawn Light

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Gated Doorway, Wall

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

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