Tag Archives: pattern

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

Melting Ice and Sunrise Reflection, Tioga Lake

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Melting Ice and Sunrise Reflection, Tioga Lake
Melting Ice and Sunrise Reflection, Tioga Lake

Melting Ice and Sunrise Reflection, Tioga Lake. Tioga Pass, California. June 19, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light on the peaks of Kuna Crest is reflected in a meltwater channel in the frozen surface of Tioga Lake at Tioga Pass.

On the weekend that Tioga Pass opened this year, I spent the “opening day” photographing along highway 120 in the park. That night I stayed in Aspen Camp in Lee Vining Canyon, a standby for me at almost all times of year when I photograph in the area and Tuolumne Meadows campground is not open. (That NPS campground typically opens a few weeks after the pass opens and then closes in late September.) The next morning I was up fairly early, planning to photograph more or less in the Tenaya Lake area a bit after sunrise. I drove up toward the pass and soon came to Tioga Lake, which lies next to the road just below the pass.

I had noticed the striking veined patterns formed by the melting ice the previous day but had not photographed them. When I saw them in the morning I spontaneously decided to stop and see what I could do with the subject, especially since it looked like the ice was starting to pick up a bit of color from the pre-dawn light. I quickly got out and set up and found a way to line up the melted channel in the icy surface with the peaks of the distant Kuna Crest inside the park. As the light began to strike this ridge its color reflected on the frozen lake and I made a few photographs before moving on.

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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

Playa Surface, Panamint Valley

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Playa Surface, Panamint Valley
Playa Surface, Panamint Valley

Playa Surface, Panamint Valley. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cracked and dry surface of the playa in Panament Valley, Death Valley National Park.

This micro-scene could be found in many locations in Death Valley and, for that matter, in many places in the USA and around the rest of the planet. But my little rectangle of the patterns of drying and cracked mud comes from the surface of the Playa (sometimes called “Panamint Lake?”) in upper Panamint Valley in Death Valley National Park. I wrote previously that it was the last day of my late-March photographic visit to Death Valley – I had finished my photography in the main Valley and had started the long drive back to the Bay Area. After crossing Towne Pass the road descends into Panamint Valley to a junction where I most often go south towards Trona and Ridgecrest and beyond.

Just before this junction the road crosses the playa, an extraordinarily flat surface formed when silt washed down from the surrounding mountains occasionally pools and gradually dries, forming what may be the flattest surfaces on the planet. As the moisture evaporates the mud cracks and splits into these interesting semi-geometrical patterns.

For no particular reason other than that this is a spot where I often make one final stop before leaving the park, I pulled over and wandered out onto the playa. I enjoy walking on these often-immense flat surfaces, but there is something very odd about the experience, too. Perhaps it is the slightly odd feeling of walking on such a large floor-flat surface in the natural world, or it might be the deep silence and stillness. In any case, as I wandered around not too far from the road I started looking a bit more closely at the patterns of cracks and soon decided that my photography was not quite finished yet – so I went back to the car to get my camera and made a small series of hand-held photographs with the camera pointing straight down. (The “straight down” shooting raises a question: How should the photograph be oriented? The horizontal orientation shown here is what I saw as I made the photograph… but I also wonder about rotating it 90″ clockwise.)

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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

Branch on Playa, Panamint Valley

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Branch on Playa, Panamint Valley
Branch on Playa, Panamint Valley

Branch on Playa, Panamint Valley. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone branch lies across dried mud on the playa of Panamint Valley, Death Valley National Park.

First, a story about the location. My first visit to Death Valley was sometime in the late 1990s, when the “hiking and biking” club at my kids’ middle and high school did a trip there. The club is a long and interesting story that I don’t have time or space to describe here fully. Suffice it to say that the teacher, “Mr. Hodges,” had for decades taken kids on amazing outdoor adventures throughout the western United States every year, and that the trip that year was to involve visits to several places in the park and then a backpacking trip down to the Valley from up in the Teakettle Junction vicinity. This may sound like a crazy thing to do with a bunch of school kids, but the group had a record of success. I was along as a parent chaperone since my oldest son was a participant in the trip.

The “readers digest” version of the story of the trip is that, as is often the case near the beginning of April, we encountered an astonishing range of weather conditions. Early on it snowed and the wind blew at gale force levels. This forced us to abandon our initial backpacking plans after we had already camped overnight near Teakettle Junction, and to head back down to the Valley. We readjusted our plans and decided that we might still be able to do an overnight hike down the length of the upper Valley and (leaving out a bunch of intervening adventures in this narrative) we arrived at Stovepipe Wells and set up camp… just in time for a tremendous dust storm to blow in. The next morning the “bus” arrived that was to take the kids and a few of the chaperones home (the rest of us were in a truck carrying tons – literally – of gear on the roof rack and in a trailer) and we headed up to cross Towne Pass. It turned out that the “bus” (which was more or less a large airport shuttle-type van) was ill-equipped for these conditions and after struggling up the pass and then racing down the other side, the transmission blew out at the bottom of the descent into Panamint Valley. Those of us in the truck pulling the trailer arrived a few minutes later to find a group of scared kids and parents who had just experienced more excitement than they wanted.

I have a strong visual memory of “Mary,” one of the parents, who had just had a bit too much excitement walking quietly north away from the road and across this playa. Ever since that time, this place that most people would probably blow right past, has almost always warranted a stop as I passed by on my way out of the Valley. This trip was no exception. I left my camera gear in the car and just walked a ways out onto the playa. As I walked, even though I had been certain that my photography for this trip was finished, I started noticing some of the small details on the playa… and I went back to my car to get my camera, then returned and made a few hand-held exposures of some of these small subjects.

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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: Textures

Zabriskie Point Gully, Morning Light

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Zabriskie Point Gully, Morning Light
Zabriskie Point Gully, Morning Light

Zabriskie Point Gully, Morning Light. Death Valley National Park, California. February 20, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning sun back-lights the dense pattern of folds in a small gully at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California.

In some ways I think this is one of the more subtle and complex of the various photographs I have made that isolate small sections of the Zabriskie Point landscape, especially the eroded patterns of the small gullies below the main viewing area. This photograph, like many in this series, was made after the normal “dawn light” time period, and at this time the sun is higher in the sky. It begins to back-light the tops of the furrows and gullies and the brighter light reflects down into the lower portions of the gully. There are a tremendous number of overlapping ridges and the color variations are quite large, though subtle at the same time. Some areas have a very blue cast, being in shadow and lit almost completely by the open blue sky. Others take on warmer tones, especially if they are illuminated by light reflected from the warm-tones earth. An area of thin clouds was floating above the scene and its shadow slightly softened and muted the light that otherwise might have been quite stark.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Email
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.