Tag Archives: north

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

Hikers in the Badlands

May 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of hikers is dwarfed by arid badlands terrain near Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park

In the midst of all the recent Death Valley photographs, with this photograph I reached back into the archives to pull up an older image that had not previously made it out of the collection of raw files. Various things impel me to dig back into the older photographs to see what I’ve missed, and in this case it was a random visit to my website that I noted in my server log — someone had linked in to a photograph of some photographers in Death Valley from this 2007 trip. When I saw that I thought to go back and look at that particular photograph and update it just a bit, and then I got side-tracked and wandered off into that raw file collection.

I recall this photograph rather clearly. For some reason I had stopped at Zabriskie point on a morning that I probably expected to produce an exceptional sunrise — at least that’s my guess based on the kind of clouds in the photograph. If I recall correctly, the morning did produce some interesting soft light, but not the stunner that I thought might happen. (I rarely stop at Zabriskie, but I make an exception if the conditions look like they might produce something unexpected — but you never know until you actually go there before dawn and see what happens.) I remember looking down toward Gower Gulch and the trail to Golden Canyon and spotting this string of five hikers. It isn’t that unusual to see people on this trail, but they stuck close together as the wound along its twisting route, and I thought that this might produce some interesting photographs and reveal the scale of this landscape.

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

Dust Storm, Early Evening

May 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Warm light on sand dunes during an evening sandstorm

This was a somewhat strange weather day in Death Valley National Park, with thick and deep morning haze, apparently caused by dust storms some distance away from my location, and then the beginnings of a local dust storm later in the afternoon and evening. Since this is a windy time of year, dust storms sort of come with the territory, and I’ve been through a few. They are not a pleasant event, since they manage to work a fine silt into almost everything — tent, car, clothes, and so on. However, they are part of the desert scene and they can provide some compelling atmospheric conditions for photography.

As I crossed Death Valley near this iconic set of dunes, the sun was dropping toward the cottonwood Mountains to the west. The low angle back light obscured and softened the features of the landscape, and the late light was beginning to shift toward the warm end of the color spectrum. From foreground to the distance there is a sequence of layers: the foreground flats with their sparse plant growth, the beginnings of the transverse dunes beyond that, rising to the peaks of Star Dune, and far across the valley the base of the mountains range, whose details are essentially invisible here.

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

Contemplating the Dunes

April 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Walkers contemplate evening light on sand dunes

The wind had been strong enough the night before that as I lay in my fairly hardcore mountain tent (fully staked out!) I could hear nearby campers pounding in their stakes, rescuing gear than had gone flying, or giving up and sleeping in their cars. The wind continued on into the morning, and as I drove away to a place that I thought might be more sheltered I passed through big blowing clouds of dust and sand. As I returned in the middle of the afternoon there was still a lot of dust in the air and the wind was still blowing, thought its force was diminishing. I went to my camp for a quick visit and the winds continued to die down. By the point when it was time for me to head out for evening photography things had calmed down considerably and I decided to visit dunes.

The large nearby dune fields were in almost pristine condition on this evening, since the wind had kept a lot of people off the dunes and obliterated many of the tracks that folks had left earlier. I selected a part of the dunes where I saw no other people and headed out. The sand was largely undisturbed and I was able to photograph the patterns created by the wind with few signs of human visits. As I worked I looked off into the distance toward the highest dunes where a few people were not returning and walking toward the highest hills. From my position the foreground was a landscape of layered and angled slopes of sand, and in the distance a few people seemed to pause and enjoy the quiet evening among the dunes.

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

Dunes and Arid Mountains

April 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Low sand dunes against a backdrop of the arid mountains of the east side of Death Valley

I made this photograph early during my evening visit to the lower portions of these sand dunes, before the sun had dropped low enough to really warm the color of the light but when the shadows were beginning to lengthen. Looking at this expanse of dunes, with shapes reminiscent of ocean waves, I considered whether to include or avoid the bits of life scattered though the dunes — and decided to mostly leave them out, except that I did build the composition around a small clump of branches poking out of the dunes in the center foreground, lining myself up to put an interesting and rugged set of mountains in the right spot beyond the sand.

The distant mountains are the Grapevine Mountains, which are actually a section of the larger Amargosa Range that runs along the east side of Death Valley. These are rugged, arid, rocky, and sun blasted mountains, with little evidence that much grows there. Late in the day the light on the mountains, and especially in shadows, shifts toward blue tones and the textures of the three layers of the scene seem connected and related — the foreground dunes, the middle distance low hills at the base of the higher mountains, and then the lower slopes of the Amargosa Range.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Hikers in the Badlands

Dust Storm, Early Evening

Contemplating the Dunes

Dunes and Arid Mountains

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