Tag Archives: park

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Ghost Towns, Photographs: Southern California

Rusting Building, Leadfield

June 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A rusting corrugated building, one of the few remaining structures at the ghost town of Leadfield, California

This is one of the few standing structures remaining from the boom town of Leadfield, in the backcountry of Death Valley National Park, in the Grapevine Mountains more or less midway between the Beatty, Nevada area and the main Death Valley. The standard story is that this town was the result of one of the biggest swindles and scams in the mining history of the area, and the story is often told of the main promoter salting the mine with ore brought in from other locations and producing brochures featuring boats on the Amargosa River… which is typically completely dry. In the process of preparing this photograph to share I did a bit of reading, and it seems like the story might not be quite so simple nor so dramatic. Apparently there was a history of prospecting and mining in this area before the town was created in the mid-1920s, and lead and perhaps silver were actually mined from the place. A range of problems led to its downfall—the distance the ore needed to be transported, problems with the sale of shares in the mines—but it may not be true that the mine itself was essentially just a scam.

This building is well-known to those who have visited the place, as it is one of two buildings that still stand. Both are located near the entrance to one of the mine shafts, and it seems likely that this was not a residence but rather some building related to mine operations. Today it is a mere shell, but I find it amazing that it still stands nearly 90 years after the “town” (which apparently consisted largely of tents) was abandoned. Even more amazing is to stand at this spot and look out at the surrounding landscape—a rugged and uncompromising mountainous desert terrain—and imagine what it must have been like to live and work in such a place.

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

Base of the Panamint Range

June 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The lower reaches of the Panamint Range drop to the floor of Death Valley

The stillness of this image belies what was actually happening when I made the exposure. It was late afternoon, and the sun was just above the ridge of the Panamint Range as we drove down through Death Valley, past the Mustard Hills and towards Furnace Creek. As often happens in the spring, the winds were rising. I saw the scene and immediately knew I wanted to stop and photograph it, with the backlit hills rising across the far side of the Valley. I grabbed my tripod, camera, and one lens and headed across the side of a nearby hill that looked like it might provide me with a higher vantage point, and immediately recognized that wind was going to be a real problem.

The same wind that had filled the atmosphere with the beautiful haze that was glowing in the backlight was also making it nearly impossible to photograph. There are some winds that are strong enough that almost no tripod can hold a camera still, and this was that sort of situation. I set up, hanging onto the tripod to prevent it from blowing over, and waited for a lull in the wind. The wind momentarily diminished enough for me to make a few exposures as a cloud shadow darkened the foreground salt flats.

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

Cascade, Boulders

June 1, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A seasonal waterfall cascades past granite boulders, Yosemite National Park

I guess I’ll go ahead and make this a “waterfall weekend” by posting a second photograph of the same little cascading creek that was featured in yesterday’s photograph. This small beauty is a seasonal cascade that is right next to the roadway—I’m definitely not taking any “wilderness photography” credit for this one. (Though the character if the creek is very similar to and remiss me of many such rocky creeks found in less accessible locations.) As is the case with some many such small creeks, this one comes and goes quickly in most years. It does not necessarily dry up completely, but it often diminishes to an unimpressive trickle later on.

Although the accessible location makes photographing this fall easy, there are still a few challenges. Perhaps the most mundane is that, given that one is photographing from the shoulder of a highway, you have to watch out for passing vehicles! From a photographic perspective there are a few more interesting challenges. One is that of composition. This section of the waterfall is some distance above the camera position, and there are only a few clean shots of it. I wanted some of the curving and flowing shapes at the top along with the faster moving, and hence narrower, section at the bottom, and I wanted to include the blocky, wet, and reflective rocks. The light is a bit tricky here, too. Fortunately, the cascade remains in shadow well after sunrise, but the best light seems to come at just about the moment when the sun starts to rise above the ridge behind the fall. Consequently, though it isn’t visible in this tightly cropped composition, I was shooting almost straight into the sun!

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Pelicans Along the Coast

May 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A line of pelicans flies along the Point Lobos Reserve coastline

Brown pelicans are probably my favorite Pacific coast birds, and I often like to photograph them when I visit the nearby Pacific Ocean shoreline. However, that’s not at all what I was at Point Lobos to photograph on this late April morning. I was more in a landscape or seascape frame of mind. That said, this photograph is an example of how things most definitely do not happen in a slow, considered, or contemplative manner when shooting landscape subjects.

I was thinking about how to try to photograph the elements of very choppy near-shore water, the further rocks that we partially obscured by mist and spray, the subtle shadings of the offshore fog bank, and the blue tones of sky. I decided to use a long lens and try to line up something that included nearby shoreline elements juxtaposed with the more distant rocks. I wasn’t having an easy time coming up with a composition that I liked. I must have momentarily looked up from the camera, because I recall spotting this line of pelicans flying up from the south and thinking that if I could just operate fast enough I might be able to get them in the frame. Being set for landscape (manual exposure and focus, live view, small aperture, on the tripod), that meant trying to quickly and intuitively make a whole bunch of quick changes. I must have managed to do so just in time to squeeze off three frames as the line of birds passed through this gap in the rocks and continued on.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: park

Rusting Building, Leadfield

Base of the Panamint Range

Cascade, Boulders

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