A forelorn branch sits near pools of reflecting water on salt flats of Death Valley National Park.
After the brief dawn light on the Panamints ended (see the photograph I posted yesterday) and the world went gray over in that direction, I noticed this odd log or branch sitting out on the mud in the salt flats between some of the ponds that streak this section of the flats. While the two minutes of beautiful color on the Panamints had ended, the increasing light was transforming what had been a fairly solid covering of gray into a transparency that revealed interesting layers and patterns of clouds in the morning sky.
I moved a bit closer and made one final sequence of Death Valley photographs before heading back to Stovepipe Wells to take down my camp and start the long drive home. I tried a couple different compositions, including some in which I was closer to the log, but in the end I prefer this one that put some distance between it and me and, I think, suggests the huge spaces that are among of the most compelling characteristics of this landscape.
The first dawn light on the snow-dusted Panamint Range is reflected in shallow winter pools on the salt flats of Death Valley National Park.
This is yet another story of serendipity, I think, though it also does involve some advance work – which should please those who become uncomfortable with the idea that not every landscape photograph results from a slow and deliberate and well-planned process! ;-)
The general location of this scene is along a section of salt flat just below the Salt Creek turnoff from the main highway – it is the first area of obvious salt flats that you come to as you head south towards the Furnace Creek area. One one of my first photographic visits to Death Valley I recall stopping near this location along the road and trying to make a photograph pointing down the length of the Valley. It was not successful, but I’ve always been a bit intrigued by this location where the road has to curve around to the east to avoid this salt flat. A day or two earlier on this trip I had stopped along the road at almost this exact location during the “boring light” part of the day after shooting somewhere else. I had wandered – without any camera gear – down across the wash to a patch of brown salt grass and beyond to the edge of the salt flat. I had noticed a lot of things: the very alien nature of this landscape consisting of mud and caked salt and not much else, the surprising presence of some worms and larvae in this tremendously salty water, the fact that the water seemed to seep from beneath the wash, and the interesting shapes that the water created as it slowly spread along the edge of the salt flat.
Move ahead to this morning, the final one of this trip to Death Valley, and I was up well before first light. I had several ideas about what I might photograph, but had not made a firm decision yet since the weather was something of an unknown. I had a vague idea about heading north up the valley and photographing the first light on the hills along its western edge. I was keeping open the possibility that spectacular light might make it worth while to photograph Zabriskie. But I really didn’t know.
I drove to the Furnace Creek/Scotty’s Castle junction and pulled over to watch the light begin to grow. There were lots of clouds! It looked like a lighter area might evolve straight to my east, but I couldn’t quite see photographic potential in it. To the north things looked pretty bleak. There was some possibility that light could happen way to the south, but I wasn’t convinced. I decided to drive a bit south and see what might happen, and very soon I came back to this place where I had stopped earlier. The light wasn’t very promising – clouds to the east seemed likely to block the sunrise light even though there were some interesting cloud patterns overhead that were starting to become more transparent as the sky began to lighten.
Then I caught just a bit of light on some of the higher clouds above the middle level clouds and I started to wonder if the light just might make it through. I went to the back of the car and grabbed my camera with one lens already attached and mounted it on the tripod. I wasn’t sure if I’d want wide or tele for some of the possible subjects, so I grabbed two additional lenses and stuck them in a shoulder bag and headed down the wash, not really looking up too much, just heading straight towards these little areas of water that I remembered from earlier. As I got close to the edge of the flats I saw that, indeed, a band of sunrise light was coming in below the cloud deck to the east (something I have learned to watch for) and starting to light up the highest peaks of the Panamints. I knew that if this light survived long enough to make it down across the range that it was going to happen fast, so I quickly headed out onto the edge of the flats, more or less ignoring the larger scene and simply looking for an interesting reflecting pool. As I set up – working very quickly now – the first sun lit up the face of the panamints and revealed radiating cloud shapes above. I had perhaps two minutes of this light… and then the small gap along the eastern horizon must have closed up as the light disappeared and went back to gray.
Sunlight reflects on granite ledges next to cascades on Tenaya Creek.
In this iteration of the “blurry-fast-moving-water-in-Sierra-creek” photograph, I was looking to cram a variety of elements into the frame – as you can see, the entire photograph is not filled with water. There is a transition from white water with flashes of sunlit light at the tops of the waves, through the water with smaller areas of foam, to water reflecting the golden late afternoon light from a cliff face on the other side of the creek, to some bits of streamside granite slabs along the lower right edge of the frame. To me, these areas of shallow water and wet rock reflecting more distant light almost have a molten quality.
One of the trickiest things about this photograph for me was dealing with the strong contrast between very blue tones in the shaded parts of the water and the very warm tones of the reflections. As every photographer knows, the light in shade can be very blue, especially when the subject is supposed to be white and is lit almost entirely by the blue sky, as is the case in parts of the turbulent water. Adjustments are necessary in order to make it look realistic and conform with the colors that our eyes tell are are there. (Our vision system is remarkable… but it is not objectively accurate!) But adjustments to the blue water, if applied to the warm tones of the reflecting granite, can end up looking bizarre and overdone in the opposite direction!
Turbulent whitewater flows through an area of steep granite along Tenaya Creek, Yosemite National Park.
You can, of course, find a place to shoot subjects like this one all over the Sierra and no doubt in many other places as well. This photograph was made during a period of relatively high water early in the season and in a spot where the water flowed over some rocks in shade. Sunlight on the other side of the stream reflected into the water and revealed highlights, especially the flying spray that I allowed to blur with a somewhat slow shutter speed.
The moving water in Sierra streams and rivers seems to be an almost irresistible subject for many photographers, and I confess that I count myself among them. In some ways it is almost too easy to make these photographs, and one basic requirement is a willingness to make quite a few exposures. The instantaneous motion of the water and the reflections of light simply cannot be controlled or predicted, so one almost has to make many, many exposures. Of course, there is a bit more to it than pointing the camera at water and then repeatedly pressing the shutter release. It is important to find some sort of compositional interest first – it could be where water flows around or over a rock, a place where the light catches the water, or possibly just the twisting forms of turbulent water. Light is extra important in these photographs I think – most often the colors come from a combination of the blue-green shades of water full of foam and from reflected light from things that are out of the frame. (In this photograph, the light mostly comes from sunlight reflected off of granite on the far side of the stream.) Shutter speed is an important consideration, as a short exposure will stop or nearly stop the water and freeze the motion, a somewhat longer exposure can hold some detail but still allow blur along the direction of the flow, and very long exposures can create a misty and diffuse effect.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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