Tag Archives: river

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

May 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

I encountered this scene a short distance up the trail from the Temple of Sinawava area in Zion National Park, in the area below the start of “the Narrows.” Here the canyon of the Virgin River becomes quite narrow, eventually narrowing so much that the river often spans its entire width. These young trees, which were just beginning to show their spring leaves, are in along a slightly wider section where the river curves, and just be flooded during times of high water. Beyond, the river and the canyon twist right, left, and then back to the right again between the steep sandstone walls.

I’m always intrigued by trying to photograph these scenes of very dense foliage in which the frame ends up filled with a huge amount of detail. It is a challenge to try to create anything like an effective composition out of this complexity, and I think it is even more difficult to make such photographs “work” in the small presentation necessary for sharing on the web.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Murphy Point, Sunset

May 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunset light on Murphy Point, photographed from Green River Overlook, Canyonlands National Park.

We spent the better part of a day scouting around the “Island in the Sky” section of Canyonlands National Park, partly with the goal of figuring out where to be for golden hour light. In the end, the very first place we had really considered ended up being the place we came back to – the Green River Overlook. While quite a few landscape photographs can be somewhat spontaneous and a matter of quickly taking advantage of ephemeral conditions, the decision to photograph at the Green River Overlook was quite the opposite. Not only had I decided that I wanted to shoot at this location, but I had even worked out the composition of the shot that I wanted.

With that in mind, we came back here almost an hour before actual sunset, confident that the photograph I had in mind would be waiting for me. And it was! That photograph was shot looking roughly west or a bit south of west and across the canyons dropping into the Green River. But I also had quite a bit of time to look around at other possible subjects as the light slowly transformed. The steep upper cliffs of (what I believe to be) Murphy Point stood to my south and the sunset light began to intensely color their red rocks during the final few minute of sunlight. So I took a moment away from the shot I had come for, pivoted the tripod this direction, and made a few exposures. The geology seen in this area is amazing. Layer upon layer build from the bottoms of the river canyon, through the side canyons and onto the lower plateaus. Then shattered rock stacks up against the tall upper sandstone cliffs that are topped by the relative flatlands of the “Island in the Sky” area. Here the low angle side-light from the setting sun reveals a lot of the more subtle details of this landscape.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

May 23, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

This is a type of photograph that I enjoy searching out – though it is also a type that can be difficult to present effectively in online jpg form, given the amount of fine detail that is present. The challenge is in trying to capture both the dense complexity of the thick foliage and the complex patterns of rock – and these things fill the frame completely – and still try to find some sort of compositional logic that might still be visible in the end. In general, I think these things work better in fairly large prints.

The scene is along a section of the Virgin River in Zion Canyon of Zion National Park. A trail continues up the canyon beyond the point that is accessible via the park service shuttles. Here the canyon gradually narrows, and thickets of young cottonwood trees grow on the valley floor in what I believe must be the sediment left behind by floods. The canyon itself becomes a bit more convoluted, twisting right and left around the vertical sandstone walls. For much of the day there is little or no direct sunlight at the bottom of the canyon, and that was certainly the case during the time when I made this photograph.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning

April 30, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A nearby sandstone tower backed by a more distant cliff face in morning light, Zion National Park.

If you look at the photograph that I posted yesterday, you can probably locate almost the entire composition of this photograph contained within the earlier one. This perhaps illustrates one or more things about how I sometimes think when making photographs. One approach that I think I use quite a bit is to try to isolate small sections within much larger landscapes. If you look at yesterday’s image, you’ll see that it uses a fairly familiar sort of approach, namely to include a fairly large swath of “stuff” from close to far away within the frame. Today’s image, though, eliminates out all of that other stuff that might provide a wider context and instead just “shows” one small, interesting bit of the larger scene. And, obviously, I used a longer lens – something else that I often do when shooting landscape. I’m most certainly not one of those photographers who buys into the notion that “landscape photography is done with wide-angle lenses!” I also like juxtapositions. In this scene there are perhaps quite a few – and you might even see some that I’m unaware of. There are color juxtapositions the bright green at the bottom against the very different tones of the rocks; the brighter reddish rocks in the foreground against the darker and more blue or even purple tones of the more distant rocks; the clarity of the close and sunlit red rocks against the lower contrast and somewhat haze-obstructed character of the distant cliff.

The location is in the Virgin River drainage of Zion Canyon. One person described it as “Yosemite in red,” and now that I have been there I can certainly see why! While the overall scale of this valley is smaller than that of Yosemite, the verticality of the place is just as stunning. In fact, in some ways, because the walls are closer and because of the wild colors, it may be more stunning. (Of course, Yosemite does have those waterfalls… and some crazy dome formations… and the massive scale of features like El Capitan. I digress… ;-) The smaller scale makes some kinds of photography perhaps a bit easier. For example, those “juxtapositions” I mentioned above can be fine tune a bit more readily by moving the camera position a few feet. (I did that here as I moved the camera a bit to get three trees way up on the far cliff to line up to the left of the upper section of the closer formation on the right side of the frame. Ironically, you probably didn’t even see them until I mentioned that… ;-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: river

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

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Murphy Point, Sunset

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Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

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Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning

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

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