Tag Archives: rocks

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Rocks, Playa, Desert Mountains

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Rocks, Playa, Desert Mountains
Afternoon light on desert mountains beyond rocks and playa, Death Valley.

Rocks, Playa, Desert Mountains. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Afternoon light on desert mountains beyond rocks and playa, Death Valley.

This spot has drawn my attention over many years of visits to Death Valley. It would be easy to miss — it is just a rock-covered hill next to a roadway, in a location where people are most likely looking in a different direction. But I stop here frequently and poke around, looking for photographs. It hasn’t been easy!

One of the challenges here is that, in my view, the best time to photograph here is in the late afternoon, just before the sun drops behind the far ridge. Not only does this bring the challenges of shooting almost directly into the sun, but the black rocks and easy turn into pure black shadows. It is also a bit of a challenge to find combinations of rocks that have some kind of compositional integrity. This photograph comes from an afternoon when some dust and haze highlighted light beams from the late-day sun.

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.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Badlands Canyon

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Badlands Canyon
Badlands hills and slopes rise from a Death Valley wash.

Badlands Canyon. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Badlands hills and slopes rise from a Death Valley wash.

The impetus for this photograph was originally the dark rocks distributed across the smooth, hard surface in the foreground. I started from a camera position to the right of this scene, photographing across the rocks and into the light, which backlit the rocks and made the smooth surface glow. But I wasn’t quite happy with the result so I moved around a bit… and eventually decided to place this ascending canyon behind the rocks.

This part of Death Valley National Park, like other locations there, features stratified deposits of remarkably contrast colors and textures. Here nearly back layers alternate with other layers that are almost white. The formations go on for great distances, and you can see that a bit here by looking up the valley in the center to distant peaks with similar erosion patterns.

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.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Coastal Rocks, Surf, and Horizon

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Coastal Rocks, Surf, and Horizon
Pacific Ocean surf breaks over coastal rocks, backed byt the distant horizon.

Coastal Rocks, Surf, and Horizon. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Pacific Ocean surf breaks over coastal rocks, backed byt the distant horizon.

This may be the final photograph in a recent series of images from a short visit to the upper Big Sur Coast during a brief break between our recent storms. It was just one morning, but after being kept mostly inside by a stream of closely-spaced storms, it seemed like time to get out!

While there were no storms on this day, the effects of the past storms were everywhere — downed trees, landslides, damaged roadways. And the next one was already starting to arrive, muting the light, sometimes making the atmosphere a bit murky, and generating large surf from the northwest.

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Headlands, Surf, and Fog

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Headlands, Surf, and Fog
Headlands and coastal mountains obscured by winter fog along the Big Sur Coast.

Headlands, Surf, and Fog. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Headlands and coastal mountains obscured by winter fog along the Big Sur Coast.

This is a scene that I have tried to photograph many times. When I stop to make a photograph here, it always seems like it should be easy… but it inevitably ends up being very challenging if not impossible. The subject is quite a distance away, so it requires a very long focal length. However, the long focal length magnifies issues created by air movement across the great distance, and even with though I want to evoke that soft atmosphere, it is hard to get the right balance of detail where it is needed. I tried again this past week, and decided to interpret the subject in a bit of a different manner.

A challenge is that the hazy conditions that obscure and diffuse the subject in the way I hoped for also tend to be both gray and of quite low contrast. To address that I decided on a brighter, high key rendition of the scene in which the colors are extremely subtle and the darkest tones are, objectively speaking, still at the brighter end of the scale. In a sense, the object here is to “suggest” more than to “record.”

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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