Tag Archives: rock

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

Highlands, Autumn Light

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Highlands, Autumn Light
Highlands, Autumn Light

Highlands, Autumn Light. Zion National Park, Utah. October 28, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High country of Zion National Park in evening light

On this visit to Zion National Park we did not stay in the usual place, the park boundary town of Springdale, with its hotels and restaurants. Instead we stayed at a place a bit more off the beaten path, up a quiet road quite a few miles away from this town, where we had a home to stay in for a few days.

In the past I have visited many of the more popular areas of the park, since I’m still new to Utah and its national parks and feeling my way into a better understanding of these places. By the time of this trip some elements of the experience were beginning to feel familiar, and we were beginning to look at places we had not visited before. This is one of those areas, and we headed up into it late in the day, when others mostly seemed to be heading down. We weren’t really quite certain what we would find, but we figured that we would at least get up high. On the return trip we came to an area of open terrain with peaks to one side as the sun was setting, and driving past this spot I was stopped short by the light. We stopped, I got out, and I made this photograph more or less from the roadside.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cliffs, Trees, and Morning Light

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Cliffs, Trees, and Morning Light
“Cliffs, Trees, and Morning Light” — Morning light highlights trees high on sandstone cliffs in Kolob Canyon

The Kolob Canyon area of Zion National Park is less visited than the areas near Springdale, Utah. It is a significant drive away, and the park service has (wisely?) left it relatively undeveloped — a very small visitor center, no restaurants, just a road into a very beautiful area with a lot of trailheads.

We visited this area on a fall morning when the light was just coming over the tops of the tall cliffs to the east and backlighting some beautiful atmospheric haze. Photographing these juxtaposed rock faces and buttresses with a long lens, not only was distance telescoped but the haze softened the scene even more than it otherwise might and muted the colors a bit. There is a lot of small detail in this scene, but most of it is suppressed, with the exception of the thin edges of light on the rock and the backlit trees.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Pothole and Sandstone Valley

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Pothole and Sandstone Valley
Pothole and Sandstone Valley

Pothole and Sandstone Valley. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 23, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A pothole in a sculpted sandstone valley

A group of us, all photographers, gathered on this morning outside of the town of Escalante. We had arrived from various points around the American West including California, Utah, Arizona with a plan of spending a few days photographing somewhat remote areas of Utah canyon country. After exchanging greetings we headed out to the spot where we would camp for the next few days, where we set up and settled in. After a bit of mid-afternoon wandering around in the area around camp, we decided that it was time to locate a place to shoot in the evening.

One member of the group — sort of our unofficial leader, in that he lives in the area — suggested a spot a few miles north of our location, so we loaded up a few vehicles and headed that way. This place is a wonderland of sinuous sandstone formations, including large flat areas, ridge tops, gullies, potholes, twisty valleys and more. Although we were only there for a few hours, it is the sort of place where one could photograph many times and still find new subjects. After starting out together and photographing some of the more obvious features in the area, we split up and headed off in different directions. As high clouds muted the late afternoon light I saw this rock-bound landscape of curving sandstone heading off towards the west.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Trees and Cliffs, Morning

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Trees and Cliffs, Morning
Trees and Cliffs, Morning

Trees and Cliffs, Morning. Zion National Park, Utah. October 28, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on red rock cliffs and trees

Zion National Park, especially to a California Sierra photographer, is an almost ridiculously colorful place. One California friend describes Zion Canyon (which is not where this photograph was made, by the way) as “Yosemite Valley in Technicolor.” Another friend, a California landscape photographer, points out that somehow the Sierra looks “so gray” when one returns to their after photographing in Utah. And the color contrast is even more striking in the fall when the red rocks are not the only source of intense color — there are also the wild colors of autumn leaves, the deep blue of the sky, and the greens of pinyon pine and juniper.

I’m always a sucker for photographs of trees and mountains lit from behind, and I knew in advance that such an opportunity might arise when we went to this slightly less popular canyon in the early morning. In fact, I even rephotographed a few subjects that I had shot on the previous visit, partly because the conditions were different this time and partly because I think I understood them better on the second visit. This ridge sits below a much larger — monumental, actually — sandstone cliff at a bend in the canyon. As the sun rises above the much higher canyon rim it begins to cast light obliquely across this buttress and the single tree that grows on top of it.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.