“Corkscrew Peak, Evening” — Evening light on the giant alluvial plain leading up towards Corkscrew Peak.
This peak has long intrigued me — along with the entire ridge that it lies on. Perhaps the name first caught my attention when I was trying to identify landmarks in photographs I took from out in the Valley. Hint: it does not really look much like a corkscrew, though I can see how the tilted rock layers that seem to run around it inspired the name.
I photographed this on my first evening in Death Valley back in February. After a very long drive from the Bay Area I set up camp, rested a bit, and then it was time to go find something to photograph. Since it was late in the day I wanted to keep it somewhat simple, so I headed to this spot along a road leading out of the Valley, arriving just in time to photograph the day’s last light.
“Reflected First Light, Panamint Mountains” — Shallow salt flat water reflects the first light on the Panamint Mountains.
During my late-February visit to Death Valley National Park, I spent two early mornings photographing the Panamint Mountains in the first light, with the salt flats and shallow water in the foreground. The water is not the ephemeral “Lake Manly” phenomenon that we saw in 2024. This is a slow, shallow flow of water that seems to continue all year, regardless of conditions. It is just enough water to produce these reflections.
These days I photograph almost exclusively with a full frame digital system. (Sometimes I use a smaller APS-C system, often for my street and travel photography.) I usually use a pretty straightforward set of lenses that work well for my landscape photography, but occasionally I bring out an adapted medium format zoom lens and mount it using the Mirex tilt/shift adapter — yes, movements with a zoom lens! That was pretty useful for this photograph given the low light and the extreme distance between the foreground and the distant mountains.
“Zabriskie to Rogers Peak” — Long morning view, from formations at Zabriskie Point to distant Rogers Peak in the Panamint Mountains.
Poor Rogers Peak doesn’t get a lot of respect. Despite being just under 10,000 feet tall, offering a rather impressive view from close up, and being snow-capped in the winter… it is eclipsed by its neighbor, Telescope Peak, the highest in the park. (You can see a bit of the shoulder of Telescope Peak at the far left.) It doesn’t help that a communications complex has been installed on its summit — which seems like a bit of an inappropriate insult in a national park!
The photograph encompasses a very long view, extending from rugged hills at Zabriskie Point all the way across Death Valley to the summit of the Panamint Mountains. I estimate that this is over 20 miles as the proverbial crow flies. Such distances are common in Death Valley National Park, a huge place with an expansive landscape.
“Desert Mountains, Morning Shadows” — Early morning light casts long shadows across desert mountains, Death Valley.
This photograph was sort of “unintended” — I made it after I finished with my primary subject for the morning. A plan to photograph shallow water near the edge of salt flats brought me to this spot well before sunrise. The Panamint range (behind the camera position in the photograph) catches the first light, and I photographed from its arrival on the highest peak until it worked its way all the way down and across the valley floor.
This was a period of focused and continuous photography which sometimes entailed working quickly as the light changed — and refocusing a tilt/shift lens setup that I was using. Eventually the light came to my camera position, and the landscape of light and shadow that I had come for was now behind me, literally and temporally. I paused, looked up, took in the full circle of the landscape, and for the first time noticed the morning shadows stretching across these desert hills and mountains.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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