Tag Archives: playa

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

First Light, Cottonwood Mountains

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First Light, Cottonwood Mountains
First dawn light descends the eastern face of the Cottonwood Mountains and touches the desert floor

First Light, Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First dawn light descends the eastern face of the Cottonwood Mountains and touches the desert floor

A morning like this on the desert flats, surrounded by arid and rugged mountains, waiting for the sun to rise, is very special. We arrived in the dim, pre-dawn light and set out across the flats toward the edge of dunes, passing across scrubby desert plants and over rocky and sandy ground, listening to the steady crunching of footsteps in the silent landscape. We probably should have started a bit earlier, but we lingered a bit too long over coffee, and as we approached the edge of the dunes the sun began to move down the face of the mountains to the west.

The light on the mountains  was set off against a sky darkened by the clouds of a passing weather front, and thin clouds intermittently shadowed the dawn light. It worked its way down from the ridges to the base of the mountains and then it very quickly began to light the terrain around us, first with gently cloud filtered light and soon more intensely. We quickly stopped walking and looked around for any nearby subject that might serve as a canvas for this light — I found a few long plants nearby growing in sand and moved to position them in front of the mountains as the soft light touched them.

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Exposed Playa, Dunes

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Exposed Playa, Dunes
Old playa surface exposed among sand dunes

Exposed Playa, Dunes. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Old playa surface exposed among sand dunes

I recall being fascinated by these old (how old I do not know) bits of old playa surface that poke out from under shifting dunes in Death Valley from the first time I wandered in the sand dunes. Walking toward the dunes from the roadway, the route almost invariably passed among these features. (I usually try to step between or around them, as many of them are quite fragile.) Although they appear now in places where it seems very unlikely that we will find water, the cracked mud surface betrays the fact that it was here once.

This example was a bit of a surprise. We had photographed around the periphery of the dunes at sunrise, and then walked up the sand to photograph their textures, forms and colors. Mostly I look for juxtapositions of the curving shapes of dunes, and contrasts between sunlit and shadowed areas, especially where the wind has created fine rippling pattern. Wandering a bit further into the dunes I came over a sand ridge and saw a group of potential photographs, with this outcropping sticking out from under the sand at the bottom of a low spot surrounded by higher dunes.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Clouds at Dawn, Death Valley

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Clouds at Dawn, Death Valley
Dawn storm clouds gather above Death Valley and desert mountain canyons

Clouds at Dawn, Death Valley. Death Valley National Park, California. March 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn storm clouds gather above Death Valley and desert mountain canyons

From this high spot there is a true 360 degree panorama — east over Death Valley, stretching far to the north and south with more mountains beyond, south and north along the spine of the Panamint Range, and behind across mountains and valleys and eventually a few peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Many times when I have been here the conditions have been at least mildly challenging, often with wind and sometimes cold, and on at least one occasion snow. This morning was relatively benign with temperatures well above freezing and winds that didn’t start to truly howl until perhaps an hour after our arrival. The quieter conditions made the contrast between deep silence and immense landscape even more striking.

There was a brief burst of sunrise light when we arrived, but it quickly faded as thicker clouds from an incoming weather front blocked the light. But the clouds were moving and as the morning progressed they began to open up a bit. At the moment of this photograph the clouds still blocked the sunlight, but a narrow band of color remained above the far mountains and brighter skies were appearing through breaks in the clouds. Below a large wash snaked down the bottom of the huge canyon toward the playa of Death Valley far below.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Photograph Exposed, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Southern California

A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa”

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(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)

Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa - Black and white photograph of two "moving rocks" on the Racetrack Playa at Death Valley National Park. Morning light with unusual clouds, and the Grandstand in the distance.
Black and white photograph of two “moving rocks” on the Racetrack Playa at Death Valley National Park. Morning light with unusual clouds, and the Grandstand in the distance.

Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2006. © Copyright 2006. G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Moving rocks, lenticular clouds — morning on the Racetrack Playa.

This photograph from Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa is one of the first I made when I began photographing this landscape seriously, and it remains one of my favorites from the park — yet it also carries a flaw that I’ll describe below.

My first visit to Death Valley National Park had been about seven years earlier at the very end of the previous millennium, when I was one of several adults accompanying a group of middle school and high school students on a visit that was to include a short backpack trip in the Cottonwood Canyon area. The story of that trip deserves its own article, one that would include snow, near-hypothermia, winds that blew down tents, a retreat from the pack trip, an attempt to hike down the upper portion of Death Valley, water shortages, a dust storm, a dangerous situation with a bus, and more.

I’ll never forget my first view of Death Valley on that first visit. We arrived in the park after dark, stopping between Towne Pass and Stovepipe Wells at a small campground a few thousand feet above the valley floor, where we set up in the darkness and went to sleep. Having never seen the Valley before, the next morning I unzipped my tent and stepped outside to see the stupendous “oh wow!” landscape of Death Valley and the mountains on the far side in the beautiful morning light. I was hooked, and I’ve been going back annually since then. Continue reading A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa” →