This photograph is a bit of an exercise in changing my perspective. If you were in Death Valley or other places where sand verbena grows and blooms, you might first notice a pinkish-purple color out on a gravel slope somewhere. Getting closer you would see large, sprawling individual plants with large pink-purple “flowers.” But a closer look reveals that these are actually globular clusters of many small flowers.
Continue reading Sand Verbena Flowers
This photograph features two rather different Death Valley flowers. The bright yellow desert gold flowers cover gravel benches and fans after wet winter seasons. They were all over the place when we visited in late February this year. The desert five-sot is not an uncommon flower, though it isn’t seen in anything close to the numbers of the desert gold. It is also less obvious due to its smaller blossoms and darker color.
We had stopped at this location in southern Death Valley to photograph the (very obvious!) desert gold and to look for the also-plentiful sand verbena blossoms. But almost any time you stop for flowers in the park, if you look around you’ll find others besides those you came for — and here that meant we found plenty of desert five-spot flowers nearby.
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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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I walk a lot. Most days I try for 4 or 5 miles, sometimes more. I always carry a camera — most often I don’t take it out of my small pack. But other times I spot something that interests me, and I’m glad I brought it a long. When I came across these intensely colorful autumn leaves on the ground beneath a copse of trees, I stopped and spent a few minutes photographing.
In my part of the San Francisco Bay Area, the autumn color season comes late, likely due to our gentle climate. We don’t see all that many autumn leaves here in October, and then things get started later in November. It seems that this year things are peaking right around the start of December. (I like to point out that I can make my “fall color season” go on for months, from the first hints of Sierra Nevada autumn color in September, to a few trees that still have leaves on New Year’s Day and beyond.)
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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.
I spotted this little architectural oddity somewhere near the St. George Castle in Lisbon, high up in the hills. This is a single wall – it is all the same building. I can only assume that the building is divided into two or more residences and that those who live there have very different ideas about paint! Both are pretty striking. Purple isn’t quite a typical building color, and the worn, layered, and textured quality of the right side is about as different as I can imagine.
Little scenes like this are among those that I’m always looking for when traveling — interesting shapes, architecture, color, texture, and items that reflect that particular place.
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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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