Tag Archives: peak

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

Dusk Sand Storm

Image May 5, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Clouds from a desert sand storm climb into the Amargosa Mountains at dusk.

Here is yet one more photograph from that wild early April evening in Death Valley National Park, when a sand storm was brewing in the upper Valley, starting near Stovepipe Wells and then moving northeast across the mountains of the Amargosa Range. Because I had advance warning of the conditions I was watching for this to develop, and I had a rough plan in place to make photographs of the event. That said, you never know exactly how these things will play out. For example, I had not anticipated the amount of “stuff” that would be blown up into the Amargosa Range, nor could I have predicted the potential for a last bit of twilight color.

During the first part of the event we headed up toward the Amargosa Range, taking the Beatty Cutoff toward the road to Daylight Pass. Up there the most impressive factors were the wind (it was howling!) and the general level of dust in the atmosphere. Eventually we worked out way back down into the valley and finally to near the source of the dust and sand near Stovepipe Wells. Often it such conditions I’ll try to stop just outside the worst of it and use a long lens to photograph into the conditions. That was the idea here, though there was a lot of wind and flying sand where I stopped, and I had to hide in the (slight) protection of the leeward side of my vehicle. Overall the scene was initially quite colorless, but at twilight a pink color came to the sky above and beyond the mountains.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Mount Dana

Image March 10, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mount Dana, against a sky full of summer thunder clouds.

This photograph comes from last summer, on a lovely mid-July day when I was slowly poking around a few locations near the eastern Yosemite boundary on a relatively early visit to the high country. You never know, from year to year, what you’ll find there in July. In a very snowy year this scene could still hold a lot of snow, but in 2018 the snowfall had been less impressive, and most of it was already gone. The creeks were still high and meadow grasses were coming up, with the promise of wildflowers soon to arrive.

The peak itself is on the park boundary, and the view here looks toward the side that is inside the park. However, my camera location was outside the park, in an area that has long intrigued me — for this view, for views back up to the crest north of Tioga Pass, and for some of the more intimate nearby views. It was a cloudy day, and alternative light and shadow moved across the landscape, changing the appearance from moment to moment.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Light, Meadow and Lake

Image September 6, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light comes to Sierra Nevada peaks beyond forest-rimmed lake and meadow

This photograph includes many of the major visual themes from a weeklong photographic visit to this part of the Sierra Nevada backcountry: The green meadow with its small trees, the still lake, low hills between the lake and the deep valley beyond, and across that valley many high, alpine peaks.

Although it is not the highest peak in this view — not by far — the bulky peak in the center of the frame dominated the view from this spot and many other nearby areas. (It also appears in a previous photograph I posted from near this location.) This morning began with partly cloudy skies, and as the sunlight began to penetrate the overcast it sent a beam of warm light across the face of the peak.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Light, Reflection

Image August 25, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First light on a backcountry Sierra Nevada lake and ridge

This is an older photograph that I recently came across as I went back through old image files. (I do this from time to time, and I invariably find something that I missed the first time around. ) We were on a pack trip out of the Mammoth Lakes area and on the trail for perhaps five days, moving among a series of lakes that all were under the watchful eye of the peaks in the photograph.

I was up early and perhaps a bit disappointed in the perfectly blue sky. However, as the first dawn light struck the peaks, it produced a perfect reflection in the surface of the lake, broken only by the pair of boulders, placed here in the composition to break up the mirror-image symmetry. While clouds in the sky might have been interesting, the smooth blue gradients reflected in the water make the peaks seem to float.