Tag Archives: purple

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

Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range

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Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range
Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range

Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Post-sunset light from bright red clouds casts a reddish glow on the Amargosa Range, Death Valley Buttes, and the Kit Fox Hills.

I think this might be the second in what I could call the “impossible color” series from my late-March trip to Death Valley. (The previous image was a photograph of a wash/alluvial fan at the base of Tucki Mountain, photographed on the same evening.) The lurid and unreal colors are not the result of post-processing gone horribly wrong – the light was actually this color for a short period. The sun had already gone down behind the Cottonwood Mountains to the west of my shooting location in the middle of Death Valley not far from Stovepipe Wells. It had been an interesting sunset with the usual increase in warm colors and some attractive clouds in the sky.

What happened next was something that is probably familiar to those who have done a lot of landscape photography, though they recognize that it is not something that you can quite predict. After the sun had set and dusk was coming on, some final light from far to the west, where the sun had probably already dropped just below the horizon, began to strike high clouds above Death Valley. (I could sort of see this coming, since I had noticed increasing color in the sky further to the east.) As this happened, these clouds began to glow with an intense red color that was mixed with the normal bluish tones of dusk light and surface features took on this purple/red glow for just a brief moment before the light faded.

(Those who look very carefully may notice that the sky above and to the east of the mountains is a lot bluer than the mountains themselves. The color had already left the sky to the east, and at this point was coming from the sky directly overhead and to my west.)

I’m still trying to sort out the complex geology of this area and the ways that features are named. The larger range containing these peaks is called the Amargosa Range, though it encompasses many smaller named sub-ranges – I think these might be part of the Grapevine Mountains, roughly in the neighborhood of Thimble and Corkscrew Peaks. A dark peak in front of the main range at the very far right may be part of Death Valley Buttes, and the banded foreground hills are sometimes called the “Kit Fox Hills.”

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

Desert Wash at Base of Tucki Mountain, Dusk

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Desert Wash at Base of Tucki Mountain, Dusk
Desert Wash at Base of Tucki Mountain, Dusk

Desert Wash at Base of Tucki Mountain, Dusk. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft rose-colored dusk light illuminates an alluvial fan below a canyon at the base of Tucki Mountain, Death Valley National Park.

This is one of several photographs from the recent Death Valley trip that beg the question, “Is that color real?!”*

Yes, this really is the color of the light from this scene.

I learned quite a while ago that the interesting light most definitely does not end at sunset – often the best and most interesting light comes after the sun has set. Sunset on this evening had been quite interesting, but a few minutes after the sun set the last brilliant red light struck high clouds overhead and lit up the entire scene with this lurid and intense wash of color.

The scene is a large desert gravel wash where a drainage canyon spills out into Death Valley at the base of Tucki Mountain and forms a huge alluvial fan. I had climbed to the top of a low hill to shoot late afternoon and sunset light, so I had a good vantage point to view this wash beyond intervening hills. Tucki Mountain itself is a massive lump of a mountain that rises above Stovepipe Wells – what it lacks in terms of an impressive and jagged summit peak in makes up for by means of its sheer bulk. It constitutes a large spur off of the Panamint Range and almost seems like a small sub-range all by itself.

*After I originally wrote the text to this post I made a 12″ x 16″ test print of this photograph. As I often do, I put the print out on a table in our living room so that I can see it in a context other than that of my small studio. My wife, who is a very perceptive viewer and who has seen the results of, uh, printer errors (for real fun, print on the back side of your paper by accident some time…) looked at these colors and said, “Is something wrong with your printer?” Ah, I love critics! ;-)

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

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains, Morning

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Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains, Morning
Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains, Morning

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on Mesquite Dunes and the Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

This is one of the images I had in mind on the most recent late-March trip to Death Valley. When I visited earlier this year in February I started thinking about photographing the dawn light on the lower slopes of the Cottonwood Mountains along the west side of upper Death Valley. I had (and still have!) in mind several locations from which to explore this interesting terrain and light, but among them were a few that placed the Mesquite Dunes (a.k.a. “Death Valley Dunes”) in the foreground. (Why didn’t I shoot this subject back in February, you ask? The weather did not cooperate! There was rarely good light in the morning and, in fact, I had to deal with rain and snow on that visit!)

Besides finding a location from which to line up the elements of the shot, the other keys are having a long enough lens and, well, being there at the right time! And, as I was reminded in February, a bit of luck with the weather doesn’t hurt either. Although it had snowed and rained right before my arrival on this visit, this time the weather ended up being clear for the most part and was even turning downright hot by the time I left later on the day that this photograph was made.

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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: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Purple Dawn, Mono Lake

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Purple Dawn, Mono Lake
Purple Dawn, Mono Lake

Purple Dawn, Mono Lake. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. June 29, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pastel shades of purple and blue just before dawn at Mono Lake.

Back at the end of 2010 I wrote that I was going through all of my 2010 raw files to look for images that I had passed over, as I do near the end of every year. Things got busy, I got distracted, and I only got about half way through the year’s files. Recently I have returned to the 2010 photographs to try to complete the task, and this is one of the photographs that I rediscovered as I resumed the search with images taken near the end of June.

This was my first real photographic trip to the Sierra during the summer season of 2010. I had made a brief trip up there, visiting Yosemite Valley and then crossing Tioga Pass, back in early June right about the time that the pass opened. However, on this trip I was able to spend several days in the high country and kicking around near Mono Lake. This can be a great time of the year up there since conditions range from what seems like late winter in the high country to real summer in places like Owens Valley and around Mono Lake.

On this morning I decided that I’d head down to Mono Lake well before dawn and see what I could turn up. I did not go to the iconic South Tufa area on this morning, thinking instead that I’d try for some different and longer views of the lake. (Later in the morning I traveled a good distance south of the lake on the less-used section of highway 120.) There were, obviously, clouds in the morning and they blocked the sunrise. However, the light glowed through and over and under and around them, and even though there was not direct light in very early morning image, the colors were quite something. The group of tufa towers at the lower left are offshore not far from the South Tufa area.

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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.