“Panamint Valley” — View across Rainbow Canyon toward the flats of Panamint Valley.
Death Valley National Park is a huge landscape, in more ways that one. The park is huge. It is the largest park in the contiguous states. (Alaska, where everything is on a larger scale, has four larger parks.) Within the park we often are able to view huge distances — in fact, Death Valley’s visual scale reminds me of places I’ve seen in Alaska. Here we look down Rainbow Canyon and across the entire Panamint Valley (one valley west of Death Valley itself) toward more desert mountains.
A New Hampshire valley full of trees in a rainbow of autumn color.
We ended up at this location more or less by accident. We had just finished photographing an area that was on our list of places to visit, and as we drove away it was apparent that it was now late enough in the day that a long drive to another location was out of the question. Earlier we had pass through an area of extensive and quite colorful forest at a time when we could not stop. It was nearby, so we headed that direction… and along the way I saw a sign for a side road. We took it, ended up in a small parking lot near a trail across a bridge, and walked that way.
Later, after walking as far along this trail as slow photographers can go in a short time, we turned around and headed back. Of course, the return walk took even longer since the light was becoming more interesting. Back at the bridge where we had started, the valley along the creek under the bridge was full of trees in various states of color transformation. We stopped and made a few “wall of fall color” photos here before packing it in for the day.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A rainbow and afternoon showers in the Kings Canyon National Park high country.
This photograph is a somewhat different “take” on a scene and subject that I shared in another photograph a few weeks ago. A group of us had been camped near this little tarn (and dozens of other nearby lakes) for over a week as we photographed the heck out of the area. This spot was perhaps a ten minute walk from our base camp, so we visited often and photographed the area in a variety fo conditions — morning and evening, sun and rain.
Being established in one backcountry location for a lengthy period of time has all kinds of advantages for photography. While you might not see as large a swath of the range, you do see the smaller area in much more detail. Speaking for myself, my mental attitude toward the landscape changes in these circumstances and instead of always looking for the big thing I start to look more for the unseen thing or the unanticipated way of seeing it.
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.
A trail crosses a rise beyond an alpine lake as rain begins and a rainbow appears against stormy skies, Kings Canyon National Park.
This photograph comes from a wonderful trip into the Kings Canyon backcountry seven summers ago. A group of five photographers who have been doing such things for almost twenty years (I’ve been going along for a decade) packed in to a remote location at 12,000′ and set up a basecamp. We spent a week there photographing the heck out of the nearby landscape of granite, lakes, and peaks — and enjoying the camaraderie that comes from working together in the wilderness.
By the time I made this photograph I had settled thoroughly into the routines of living and photographing in such a place. I’ve often photographed while hiking through the Sierra, but working from a base-camp gives me time to explore more carefully, to get to know the character of a place, and to experience it in a variety of conditions. Although it was the tail-end of a drought season, we had rain from time to time, and on this afternoon I photographed an area full of lakes as the afternoon showers arrived.
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.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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