Tag Archives: panamint

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

Winter Evening Sky, Panamint Range, Death Valley

February 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Winter clouds fill the evening sky above the eastern slopes of the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park.

After the long drive from the San Francisco Bay Area I arrived at Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley and set up my camp in the mid afternoon and hung out a bit, thinking about the prospects of late afternoon and evening shooting. Because a weather front was coming in (the forecast called for a chance of rain in the Valley and pretty much certain light snow over the passes) the clouds were increasing, in many directions heading past the point of “picturesque” and more towards “socked in.” I was hoping for some evening light – or early rain? – but it seemed less promising as evening approached. In circumstances like these I may come up with a few possible shooting alternatives ahead of time, watch as conditions develop, and make a last-minute decision about where to go based on observations and hunches.

So, late in the afternoon I stopped near Death Valley Dunes and worked to line up some long shots that filled the background of the dunes with the rugged shapes of the Grapevine Mountains, and then headed towards the junction with the road to Scotty’s Castle to try to figure out if the light held more promise to the north or the south. It didn’t look totally promising in either direction, but I thought that I might be able to make something out of the haze to the south as the ridges on both sides of the Valley receded, especially if a bit of glow in the sky turned up right at sunset. So, south it was.

I drove just a little ways in that direction to a point where the road curves a bit towards the east to travel around the northernmost area of salt flats in what I think of as the lower valley – this is the area a bit south of the Salt Creek cutoff. From here there is a fairly open view all the way down to the end of the Valley, and it looked like the clouds were going to evolve in some interesting ways. It didn’t look like I would see a gaudy, brilliantly colorful sunset, but something more subtle and quiet looked like it might happen. As the light began to fade I made a series of photographs whose subject was largely the sky and the atmospheric recession along the Panamint Range (shown here) on the west side of the Valley and the mountains just beyond Furnace Creek.

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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

Clouds at Last Light – Badwater Basin and Panamint Range

May 2, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Last light of the day over the Panamint Range casts its glow on Badwater Basin salt flats and clouds.

In what may be the last gasp of my obvious attempt to extract as many photographs as possible from this late March evening in Badwater Basin, here is yet another. This one was photographed well after the sun had set, and I had turned my camera away from the expansive view north into Death Valley and to the east towards the Panamint Range and Telescope Peak over which I saw this wing-shaped cloud. While there was a thin band of relatively bright sky above the Panamint Range, everything else was heading quickly toward twilight. (The longer exposures listed in the “technical data” below will confirm the light levels.)

I’ve previously mentioned the subjective issue of how to handle the very blue tone of the “white” salt formations here. The salt is, no doubt, really white – but after the sun dips below the Panamint Range the only light is that of the very blue sky, and the salt picks this up. If you think about it you can see it on the scene, but when you look at the photographs later it is absolutely clear. I’ve been thinking for several weeks about how I’d handle this one, and I decided over a week ago that I’d “go for the blue” with this rendition.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite of .8 second and 1.3 second exposures

keywords: panamint, mountain, range, badwater, basin, salt, flats, polygons, desert, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, landscape, travel, scenic, dusk, twilight, sunset, cloud, large, dark, sky, nature, blue, evening, pink, stock, pattern

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

Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Salt Flats

April 28, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late light illuminates dusk clouds above the salt flats of Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, California.

First, my disclaimer: I really am getting very near the end of the photographs of Badwater Basin shot on this late March evening. Really, I am. I’ve posted a number already, but I don’t see how there could be possibly be more than two additional images at this point. :-)

To recap, for anyone who didn’t catch the earlier posts, I visited this spot near Badwater Basin on an evening that turned out to have a wonderful combination of somewhat unusual salt flat conditions and interesting evening clouds. The “unusual conditions” were due to recent heavy rains in Death Valley that had flooded this section of the the salt flats a few weeks earlier. The flooding had subsided – at this point there was some water below the salt crust but the surface was mostly dry – but the character of the salt “polygons” had been “reset to zero” by the water. What had been very jagged and worn and cracked material had been flattened and smoothed. While the joints between the sections of the salt are clearly still visible, they were almost flush with the surface of the flat at this time.

On top of this somewhat rare condition, I was very fortunate to be there on an evening when there were clouds and, in addition, the cloud conditions evolved beautifully as the evening progressed. I saw this possibility earlier in the afternoon, which was one reason that I chose to shoot here, but you can never really know for sure what will happen… until it happens. The clouds started out thicker than what is seen in this photograph but as the day came to an end they began to thin and separate – enough that the colorful light from the evening sun began to light the clouds during the last moments of the day.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite of two photographs at .4 and .8 second exposure time

keywords: late, evening, sunset, dusk, clouds, sky, light, orange, blue, pink, badwater, basin, salt, flat, polygon, white, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, landscape, nature, scenic, travel, mountain, amargosa, panamint, range, horizon, stock

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

Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama

April 24, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Colorful dusk clouds against darkening sky above the salt flats of Badwater Basin and the distant ridges of the Amargosa and Panamint mountain ranges.

This was one of the final photographs I made in fading light on this evening. (I made another series a few minutes later when the sky and clouds and salt flats were all various stages of blue – I may ultimately post that image here as well.) The very last light was catching the clouds above Badwater and the central portions of Death Valley, and the color was already fading quickly in the darker area to the east over the Amargosa Range.

As I have mentioned before, the very wide dynamic range between the shaded surface of the salt flats and the bright bit of sunlit cloud and sky at the far left necessitated the use of two exposures which were then combined in post. (Even after this light finally faded I was not yet finished for the day. An hour or so later I was doing night photography under the light of the rising full moon at Zabriskie Point.)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite of two exposures in the 1/2 to 1/4 second range.

keywords: badwater, basin, salt, flat, polygon, pattern, white, texture, panorama, evening, sunset, twilight, dusk, dark, sky, color, orange, pink, blue, amargosa, panamint, mountain, range, ridge, horizon, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, landscape, travel, scenic, nature, stock

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