Tag Archives: north

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

January 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Desert sunrise reflected on the surface of a metal trailer, Death Valley National Park

On my final day in Death Valley this past December I rose early to go re-photograph a location that I had shot much earlier in the week… and fouled up some exposures when I failed to pay attention to camera settings. Yes, it happens! I had a long homeward drive ahead of me on this day, but I knew that I had enough time to get back to this spot and make amends before leaving. Fortunately, the location in question was not terribly far from where I was camped, and instead of what can sometimes be a half hour, one, or longer drive to sunrise location… this time it was maybe 10 minutes. So I got to sleep in… until there was actually a tiny bit of light in the sky! I awoke, dressed in the tent, and went to my car to drive to my destination as the light was beginning to glow in the east.

As I left the campground I was already in “photographer mode,” but probably mostly so that I could anticipate what light conditions I might be working with a bit later – but I was focused enough to catch a quick glimpse of this interesting reflection on the side of a metal walled travel trailer along the route out of the campground. It may sound odd, but the shiny metal surfaces, the ambient blue pre-sunrise light, and the reflections of a few reddish clouds along the eastern skyline caught my attention. I stopped. I backed up. I opened the window of my car. I made a few photographs of the trailer, which most likely contained sleeping campers who would miss this lovely sunrise.

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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

January 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The curving driveway at the Cloisters Museum, New York City

We were in New York City during the final week of 2013, visiting family and doing the usual New York things – which, for me, always includes visiting museums and making photographs. We had visited The Cloisters, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but far uptown, on a previous visit – but having not planned very well we arrived on a day when the place was closed! So we only were able to wander around the grounds outside and the surrounding park lands and then down into town below. This time we checked more carefully, and found that not only was it open but that we could use our Metropolitan of Art passes that we used the previous day.

It was a cold day, and when we got off of the long subway ride up from lower Manhattan we were a bit surprised by the wind blowing at Fort Tryon and we didn’t waste too much time in heading over to the museum. I recalled this curving, cobble stone driveway from our previous visit, when we walked up it to get to the front entrance. This time we came from the side and saw it from the top, curving away and toward the barren trees around the museum and cold scene of the city down below the hill in the distance.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese in Flight, Dusk

January 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A flock of geese takes to the air at dusk, San Joaquin Valley

After nearly a week in the dry and desiccated (and cold!) terrain of Death Valley National Park, I decided to break up my homeward drive with an evening stop in California’s San Joaquin Valley to photograph migratory birds. It is hard to imagine two places that are more different. Death Valley is mostly hard edged, dry, with only the hardiest vegetation, and a place of scarce wildlife. The San Joaquin is largely farmland, albeit due to irrigation, and where I went there is a lot of water and many thousands of birds. It was quite a contrast with where I had been and a sort of “welcome home” to a world that I am more accustomed to.

I arrived perhaps an hour before sunset, after a long drive that had begun early in the morning on the far side of the Sierra – and with a couple of hours of driving still to do. I drove across narrow farmland roads to get to the refuge, where I stopped and sat for a few moments before switching into “wildlife photographer mode.” As I had approached the place I had spotted a very large flock of Ross’s geese along the roadway that runs along the refuge, so I made steady progress back to this spot, where I figured I would do my evening photography. There was a very large group of geese already when I got there, and more were arriving from other far off locations. The geese mostly settle in on the pasture land and eat, but every so often something disturbs them and they take off en masse in a wild maelstrom of flapping wings and noise, fly around a few times, and soon return to almost the spot they left. There were two or three such giant “explosions” of flying geese as I photographed, and I shot this group using a rather slow shutter speed in post sunset dusk light.

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

Desert Mountains and Valley

January 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Receding desert mountains about the Amargosa Valley, Death Valley National Park

At first look, the general scene here might not have appeared to offer too many photographic opportunities. Although it was still somewhat early in the morning, it was well past the “first light” phase that can make almost any subject look beautiful. There was a great deal of atmospheric haze, and it almost obscured the far mountain ranges. And, as seen in the lower portion of this photograph, while the location is in high and rugged mountains, it is an extremely spare landscape with few plants and only the subtlest of colors from the high desert sage and similar plants.

But, for me, several things were going on here. First, I like haze! Second, a few years ago, after many years of photographing in the Death Valley landscape, I began to look beyond the familiar and more obvious beauties of sunrise and sunset light in dramatic locations in the Valley, and to try to figure out how to photograph more subtle and complex beauties that I encountered at other times and in other locations. I had found myself most often driving through locations like this one, on my way to other places that I presumed would be more interesting. Yet, even though I wasn’t photographing this sort of place, I was having pleasant experiences in them and developing an affinity for them. On one trip it hit me that if I liked being here, there must be some what to make photographs that somehow expressed what it was in these apparently barren places that made me like them. So I stopped here for some time, in a place that might seem like many other places along this route, and I looked around.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

Geese in Flight, Dusk

Desert Mountains and Valley

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