Tag Archives: pattern

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.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff

March 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single Utah juniper tree in front of a sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

Shooting in this area of Capitol Reef National Park was a bit of a late-day whim. There had a been a bit of a slowing down of the photography earlier that day, and we almost felt a bit obligated to get out and do more photography in the evening. Hey, it happens! Feeling a bit less than inspired and with no specific goal in mind, we headed over to Capitol Reef and looked around, at first perhaps without a lot of enthusiasm. If you are a typical photographer, you have probably had such a day – the light doesn’t seem great, there are unfixable challenges with the location, and you just aren’t “seeing” it.

Eventually I thought it would at least be worthwhile to head up into a nearby canyon that I had visited before. We got out and prepared to walk up the canyon a ways. Before we did so, I saws this tree at the top of gravel hill at the base of the vertical sandstone cliffs and recalled that I had been interested in it when I have visited this spot once before. By now it was pretty late in the day, and the light shining through the thin overcast was bouncing off of canyon walls behind me and gently reflecting towards the wall behind this tree.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red on White, Sandstone

December 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A vestigial layer of red sandstone forms small, layered mounds atop patterned white rock, Zion National Park

All over the southwest, where various layers of sedimentary rock meet, it is possible to find odd and surprising juxtapositions of the different layers. In many places a bit of a higher, harder layer will remain above the softer material below, creating hoodoos and mushroom-shaped structures. Sometime the upper rim of a canyon will be lined with a layer of the harder rock, while there is a steep drop-off below. Here, bits of the darker read sandstone, with different types of layering and different texture, sit on top of the smoothly curving and finely layered underlying lighter rock.

I had seen this spot in Zion in the past – it isn’t all that hard to find – and even photographed it from a greater distance and different angles. This time I decided to approach more closely, walking out on the wave-like formation of the lower, lighter rock and passing around these small reddish prominences. I made this photograph on the same day I made many of my other most recent Zion photographs, a day when the light varied tremendously due to winds and cloud cover. One moment this spot was hit by brilliant sunshine, and a moment later it was in shade – and the changes did not always synchronize between the near and far elements. I made this photograph during a moment when the direct sun was largely muted by passing clouds.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Canyon Reflections, Utah

November 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the surface of a slot canyon stream, Utah

Among photographers that I know, finding ways to photograph the surface of flowing river and creek water is almost a bit of a game or even an obsession. There is something very appealing about either stopping the motion of the water, or about using longer shutter speeds to let the water blur, revealing the smooth patterns of flowing water and the interesting colorations that we can otherwise easily overlook. People I know seem to have developed their own little idiosyncratic tricks for working with this subject – special shutter speeds, an eye for particular types of reflections, and so forth.

The Utah canyons are a prime place to look for interesting reflection patterns, at least in those canyons in which the water is flowing. This narrow desert canyon contained a small, burbling steam – just enough water to be interesting and dampen boots and pants legs, but not so much as to impede progress up the canyon or make shooting difficult. The trick is to look beyond the apparent surface of the water and instead learn to look for and see the reflections instead. Part of this is looking for interesting flow and ripple patterns, such as the bit of faster moving water moving diagonally across the frame in this image. Another part is to anticipate and then find sources of reflected colored light. This photograph includes several: blue from overhead sky visible above the center of the canyon, purple and burgundy from shaded cliff faces, intense orange reflected from sunlit sandstone, and bright yellow-green from cottonwood and box elder trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pattern

Salt Flats and Waterways

Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff

Red on White, Sandstone

Canyon Reflections, Utah

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