Tag Archives: pattern

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

Erosion Patterns

January 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Deeply furrowed erosion patterns in early morning light, Death Valley National Park

I spent some time photographing Death Valley National Park in mid-December, during a very cold time of the year. It is not unusual for the place to be surprisingly cold in the middle of winter, but this was a period of exceptional cold and it got down to 25 degrees in the Valley and much colder in some of the places I visited in the surrounding desert mountains. I had arrived the evening before I made this photograph, and a sequence of events on the drive it suggest an inauspicious beginning to this visit. I usually come in through Ridgecrest and then up through Trona. I usually drive almost straight through to Ridgecrest and then take a long, late lunch break there – getting my last espresso until I come back out of the park, filling up the gas tank, and so forth. I killed pretty close to an hour taking care of these odds and ends, and then started out of town toward Trona.

Less than a mile up the road I ran into a flashing warning sign announcing that this entrance to the park was closed! This necessitated a bit of backtracking and then travel north up US 395 to then head east toward the park on highway 190. I had originally planned to arrive by mid-afternoon, set up camp, and then photograph in the evening… but by the time I finished all of this driving it was dark when I arrived and I simply pulled into the campground and slept in my car. Early the next morning, feeling just a bit disconnected, I drove over towards 20 Mule Team Canyon where I knew I should be able to find some nice morning light. In fact I did, and I soon found this beautiful miniature landscape of nearly parallel gullies in a hillside along the canyon. As the first light hit the edges off the ridges between the gullies I found a composition that mostly filled the frame with them. I finished shooting here and moved on. At my next location, I finally must have engaged my brain, and I checked the camera to find that it had been left on ISO 3200 from my previous work photographing musicians backstage at a concert in natural light. Groan! So this photograph is one that I managed to salvage from that little escapade… and I’m grateful for the relatively good performance of modern cameras… even when the operator is not paying attention!

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: Austria, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Window Shadows and Reflections

August 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The shadows and faint reflections of a window create patterns on a wall in Salzburg, Austria

Although we did not actually stay in Salzburg during out July 2013 travels, we managed to end up there on four of our 7 days in Bavaria. Our trail from Heidelberg arrived in Salzburg and our return train departed here. On a couple of other days we were traveling around the area to visit various features not far from Salzburg, so we ended up there for a few hours – on two occasions having a late lunch, taking part in Salzburg’s “coffee culture,” and then wandering around. We did see some of the main tourist places, such as the square near the Salzburg Cathedral, the castle, and the narrow and bustling (and a bit uncomfortably commercial) streets of the old downtown, but we also managed to walk through a few less busy areas.

Some of these walks took us through some very narrow and old streets between the main part of old Salzburg and the outlying area where we parked. Here the buildings sit right up against the streets, and the streets themselves were obviously constructed in a pre-automobile era since they are barely a single car wide. Many things intrigued me about these narrow streets beside their mere narrowness: the various muted colors of the buildings, the ways the streets twist and turn and come together at odd angles, the interesting way that the light played on the scene as it came down from far above or shone down street that aligned with the sun, and some of the architectural features such as the windows and the interesting metal street lights that seemed to be everywhere. In this photograph the sun was rather high in the sky but almost in line with the street, and the image of the shadows of the open windows almost mirrors the fainter pattern of the reflections from the glass.

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

Sandstorm, Dunes

April 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Strong winds lift clouds of sand high into the air above desert sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Sandstorms are common in Death Valley, especially when I visit, typically in the spring. I wasn’t totally surprised (nor totally pleased!) when one arose on the second day of this early April visit. After photographing all morning, I was back in camp to get something to eat and take care of camp business before heading back out in the mid-afternoon for the second shoot of the day. As I sat by my camp I saw a few pillars of dust out in the valley near dunes, and at that point I had a pretty good idea of what might be in store for me in the next few hours. It wasn’t long before the wind began to pick up, soon becoming strong enough to stir up a lot of dust and blow down any weak tents left by campers who had headed out for daytime activities elsewhere.

In objective terms, a sandstorm is an unpleasant thing. It is hot. It is dry. It is full of blowing sand and dust, and the fine dust gets into everything, no matter what you do to try to protect against it. In the worst cases, the blowing sand can damage the paint on vehicles. However, in visual terms, a sandstorm can be quite interesting – as long as you can find ways to shoot it that don’t risk destroying your photographic gear. It looked to me like the main storm was in the middle of the valley, so I figured I might be able to cross the valley, take road along the other side, and skirt the far edge of the storm, and photograph back into it with the light coming from behind. I drove across the valley and stopped right at the edge of the blowing sand and mostly shot from inside my vehicle so as to minimize the dust contamination. From this vantage point I could use a long lens to photograph the abstract shapes of sand dunes, backed by clouds of whirling and drifting sand that obscured the Cottonwood Mountains on the far side of the valley.

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

Salt Flats and Waterways

March 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Seasonal creeks twist though salt flats of Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, California

Since I have recently posted a few other photograph from this same location and with some of the same commentary that I might include here, I’ll try to keep this description a bit short. The photograph was made from the top of Dantes View, the Death Valley observation point that is about a mile above the lowest part of the Valley near Badwater. The panorama from Dantes View almost overwhelmingly expansive, so on this visit I though that rather than just trying to photograph that immensity, I would also use a long focal length lens to try to isolate and pick out some smaller portions of the overall scene.

This photograph shows a section of the salt flats, surrounded by browner areas that include more gravel. A darker foreground area that runs along the road is visible at the bottom of the photograph, and the upper corner includes the area where the West Side Drive runs between the flats and the lower slopes of the Panamint Range. The many waterways crossing the flats and then converging on the salt area are evidence of the role water plays in the creation of this barren terrain.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pattern

Erosion Patterns

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Window Shadows and Reflections

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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.