Tag Archives: range

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

Mountains And Salt Flats, Morning

April 18, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Death Valley, Mountains, Morning — Water seeping onto salt flats reflects morning light on Panamint Mountains

Mountains And Salt Flats, Morning

On your first visit to Death Valley and to this particular spot in the park, you might be surprised to find water here. I know I was the first time I saw the spot so many years ago. As I drove past on a road through the valley I thought I saw water on the salt flats, but I suspected that it was just a mirage. But I kept seeing it on subsequent visits and before long I stopped, got out, and walked out there to see what was going on. From the roadway one walks across a low-angle gravel fan that is one of the more desolate spots in Death Valley. At the right time during the right years, there actually can be flowers growing here for a short time, but it small numbers and widely scattered. On this recent visit, even though there were flowers around, I found spots out here where I would see literally nothing growing at all.

At the bottom of the gravel fan one enters salt weed or salt grass, an extremely hardy plant that grows in some of the most hostile locations imaginable — as long as there is some water, even if it is full of salt and chemicals. Passing through this area makes for difficult walking, between the rough but sometimes muddy ground and the sharp branches of the plant. Beyond the plants water seeps onto the salt flat, barely moving at all, then slowly travels in narrow and very shallow sheets down toward even lower portions of the valley. Surprisingly, things do live here, including insects and, on occasion, some rather exuberant birds. If you stand in just the right place, at sunrise the early morning light on the Panamint Mountain Range is reflected in these ponds.

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

Kit Fox Hills

April 8, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on the Kit Fox HIlls, Death Valley

This photograph was a bit of a lucky catch. I had gone to an elevated location where I had a more commanding view of a wide section of Death Valley, but late-afternoon clouds had drifted in above the Cottonwood Mountains to the west and the light ranged from filtered to “blah.” I try to “read” the clouds to predict what may come, and my reading on the conditions was that a small gap between the bottom of the cloud bank and the top of the mountains would produce a brief bit of good light just before the sun dropped beyond the peaks. These predictions don’t always pan out, but this one did. The light first appeared a great distance away at the upper end of the valley, but soon worked its way south across the Grapevine Mountains and then flowed across the low Kit Fox Hills.

I’ve been intrigued by this small row of furrowed hills for a long time. Their coloration and patterns let them stand out from the less differentiated material of the washes above and below them. I did a bit of reading about them during this recent trip, and I understand that they are a remnant of a very old earthquake fault along the west side of the valley. (There are fault zones along the sides of Death Valley, separating the rising mountains from the valley, which is largely filled with material washed down from the mountains.)

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Nature

Desert Mountains

April 7, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Desert mountains rise above Death Valley in evening light

This view takes me back to something I believe I understood the very first time I saw Death Valley. It was close to twenty years ago, and I had gone there as an adult with a group of middle school and high school kids who were planning a long hike in the park. (The event did not come off quite as planned, but that is a long story that I’ll have to tell some other time.) We arrived at the park boundaries after dark and made camp at the first possible place, a small and mostly unimproved campsite right off the road between the pass we had come over and the valley itself. In the dark I could tell little about the place: it was warm, the wind was blowing, I didn’t see much in the way of plant life. We climbed into tents and sleeping bags for the night.

Early the next morning I crawled out and got my first view of Death Valley. There’s nothing quite like suddenly coming upon your first view of such an iconic place. I recall the specific view even today, looking down across massive alluvial fans, across the valley itself, and at these rugged and bare hills and mountains on the far side so many miles away. This photograph, made from a different location this spring, includes a small section of the scene I looked at back then. It also illustrates one of my strongest impressions of Death Valley — it is a place where the geology is laid bare with virtually no forests or water to obstruct the land itself, even more so than above timberline where there are still lakes and where snow may linger all year. It is also a place, perhaps to our surprise, in which one of the largest factors shaping the landscape has been… water!

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Post-Sunset Geese

January 20, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter geese fly toward wetlands after sunset

These days photographing wild birds are frequently long. For me they begin about three hours before dawn, when I awake to a (very) early alarm, grab coffee and a bit of food, load my vehicle, and start out on a two-hour drive in the darkness. As I approach my destination the first color is coming to the sky above the Sierra — that is if tule fog doesn’t reduce visibility to 100 feet or so! I arrive a half hour before sunrise, set up camera equipment, and begin to work. At first I may make some landscape photographs, since it is often still too early to handhold the camera for bird photography, but soon the first birds fly up from the ponds. I usually spend the next three hours of so photographing birds and landscape — though the precise time varies depending on the conditions — and then I take a break in the middle of the day. By mid-afternoon I’m back, looking for evening photographic opportunities, and the pace of the work increases as sunset approaches. During the last few minutes of light a lot happens quickly, and then I photograph until the light is gone.

I made this photograph during that late period, following sunset, when lingering light colored the thin clouds above the western mountains. Around sunset there is a period of coming and going by the birds. Birds may rise up from ponds and fly away, or flocks may arrive from distant points and settle in for the night. Often cranes arrive just after sunset. The birds in this photograph are geese, most likely Ross’s geese, approaching the wetland ponds from that western sunset sky.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: range

Mountains And Salt Flats, Morning

Kit Fox Hills

Desert Mountains

Post-Sunset Geese

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