Tag Archives: pink

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

Plants in Sandstone Cliff

June 6, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff in the Zion National Park high country

For some reason, the small area where this cliff is found – along the Mount Carmel Highway – holds some fascination for me, and I have stopped here to photograph quite a few times. (This despite the fact that there is no good place to pull over!) In close proximity there are a small stream bed, some beautiful trees growing near the cliff, a section of much more fractured rock, and this cliff of clean, straight rock cut by vertical cracks and crossed by the diagonal lines formed by the texture of the sandstone.

In different light this section of the cliff can be a lot more red, but here I photographed it in shaded light and the tones shifted significantly towards blue. The small plants seem to survive quite well growing it what seems like an impossible location, and when I made the photograph the one on the right was just beginning to take on fall colors. A closer view reveals that the rock’s surface is covered with a wide variety of types of lichen, much of it a bit too small to make out in this web-sized photograph.

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: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Green Building, Windows

April 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A downtown San Diego building with windows and green walls

Right around April Fools Day we spent several days in San Diego. Oddly for a long-time Californian and a person who has visited that city before, I really don’t know San Diego that well. (Past visits have mostly been for various conferences and meetings, and I’ve tended to fly in, head straight to a hotel, do my business, head back to the airport, and leave.) On this visit – yes, for the first time – I spent some time photographing at Balboa Park, where there are a number of interesting subjects ranging from architecture to people. Lot’s of people!

We also walked around the downtown area of San Diego quite a bit, as that is where we stayed. Downtown San Diego has a character, as most cities do, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Architecturally, much of the area near where we were seems to be that type that is alternately attractive on account of its wide streets and very modern buildings but also a bit sterile for much the same reason. The overall place, not surprisingly, seems to mix up some of the Mexican influence, a wannabe tropical quality that occasionally reminds me just a tiny bit of Miami, and a somewhat toned-down version of the over-the-top LA Basin atmosphere. We were out walking in the morning on a weekday when I looked up as we passed the back of this building, with its interesting color combination and various window patterns.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Flower and Leaves

March 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A single trillium flower grows in the redwood forest of Muir Woods National Monument

I was brought up mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. (I like to describe myself as a “virtual native” of California, since I’ve lived here since I was four years old.) When I was a child my parents would often – or so it seemed to me – bundle us into the family car for day trips to many of the nearby areas where I photograph on day trips today: Point Lobos, Pinnacles National Monument (now National Park), San Francisco, Big Basin State Park. One of the main attractions of Big Basin is the presence of coast redwood trees. I suppose that because I’ve always known trees this large that they don’t shock me the way that they do visitors who haven’t seen them before – but every once in a while I realize just how remarkable their size is.

However, with all of my youthful visits to redwood forests, it seems odd to admit that I never saw the trillium flowers there until I was much older. In retrospect, I’m pretty certain that visiting such places was a warm weather event in my family – and trillium blossoms appear at a time of the year when things are still distinctly wet and chilly. Now I try to see them every late winter and early spring, and to photograph them if possible. With this goal, I made a one day trip to the redwoods of Marin County north of San Francisco last week, making sure to arrive very early, before the hordes of tourist buses would arrive from nearby San Francisco. I managed to get a couple of hours in the deep early morning shade of the redwood forest to photograph these flowers before the sun and the other visitors arrived, making photography less appealing. Those who may not have seen the plant in the wild might be surprised at its form. Beneath the three trios of leaves/flowers that you see in this photograph, the whole affair is supported on a single long and bare step that rises vertically from the forest floor. The flowers, which can range in color from pure white through pink to a sort of dark and dusty burgundy, don’t last long, and if you aren’t there during the short interval when they blossom you might not notice them at all.

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

Slot Canyon Tree

March 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A box elder tree stands against the vertical sandstone walls of a Utah slot canyon

Near the beginning of this late-October photographic trip in Utah, we visited a long canyon, slot-like in places, in the southern reaches of Utah in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Although I had been is small sections of little slot canyons before, this was actually the first time I ventured up a desert canyon like this one (with the exception of some in Death Vally) that had a creek running up the bottom, steep sandstone walls, and plenty of cottonwoods, box elders, and other typical plants. We started in a more or less flat area outside the canyon, waded up a section of the creek to enter the canyon, and spent the next few hours exploring and making photographs.

I have a thing about trees standing in front of rock walls, and among the mental images I was carrying as we went to the Southwest were several with that theme. I was actually thinking more about trees with fall colors, but in this particular canyon there was a still a lot of green foliage – and I liked the somewhat unusual combination of the leaves’ lime green and the pinkish, almost purple coloration of the rock in the soft reflected canyon light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pink

Plants in Sandstone Cliff

Green Building, Windows

Trillium Flower and Leaves

Slot Canyon Tree

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