Tag Archives: rocky

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

Trees and Promontory

Image June 25, 2022 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Windswept Monterey cypress trees atop a rocky promontory, Point Lobos State Reserve.

This was just about a perfect visit to an old favorite location, Point Lobos State Reserve, located on the Pacific Coast between Carmel and the upper reaches of the Big Sur region. Back home in the San Francisco Bay Area it was another 90+ degree blue-sky day,, but fog blanketed this coastal area, periodically thinning just enough to allow some directional light on the landscape.

This can be a very busy and often overcrowded park, but by going on a weekday and arriving very early I can avoid the worst of it, and even in the summer it is possible to. find morning solitude here. These windswept Monterey cypress trees grow at the edge of the Pacific Ocean where the moist fog sweeps in. The largest tree in this scene manages to survive perched atop this rocky promontory.

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, Photographs: Southern California

Dunes and Hills, Evening

Image February 5, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on rocky desert hills and sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

You may see a few photographs of this ridge and its low peaks over the next week or two. It was not my main reason for going to this location, nor was it my target when I set out on foot to photograph nearby. But as soon as I started walking I found myself intrigued by its form, the large valley beyond it, and the combination of rocky formations and a thin distribution of blown sand. I ended up photographing it on successive days on my way to and from another subject.

The ridge illustrates an important general fact about much of the Death Valley National Park geography, namely that there are a whole lot of ridges and valleys that trend roughly in a north-south direction. (Technically, the line tens to run sort of northwest to southeast.) It turns out that this is really important to photographers, since much of the early morning and early evening light either strikes features directly or else leaves them in shadow. If you are keeping track of my photographs of this feature, you’ll see a clear example of this. In a previously posted photograph made at one end of the day, the ridge is almost entirely in shadow, with just a bit of rim light near the top, and only the distant mountains are in the sun. Here the table are turned, and the ridge is fully illuminated while the distant mountains are in soft, shadow light.

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

Backlit Desert Hills, Morning

Image January 30, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning sun back lights rocky desert hills, Death Valley National Park.

Given the opportunity, I like to visit Death Valley twice each year — once during winter and again around the start of spring. While the spring visit brings the hope of seeing a brief wildflower bloom, winter is less crowded (and, yes, it can be crowded in this park) and feels more elemental. I’m just back from the winter visit, and I had the chance to both revisit some familiar places and push out the boundaries a bit by visiting locations that were new to me.

I was in a fairly remote part of the park on this morning, awake early to walk a mile or so to my intended subject. Due to the sun direction and geography, I didn’t need to start out in complete darkness… which inevitably meant that I was distracted by the landscape as I walked toward my primary goal. The sand-covered hills in this photograph are located at the end of a much taller ridge, and their extension into the large valley beyond places the tallest peaks in the early morning sunlight. More desert mountains rise in the distance beyond the wide valley.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Grove and Rocky Hill

Image November 21, 2021 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small aspen grove and a rocky hill, high in the Buttermilks.

This photograph comes from “Buttermilk Country” (also known as “The Buttermilks”) in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, an area perhaps best know to climbers for its innumerable bouldering opportunities. I’ve long wondered about the name, but in the past I had only speculated idly that something about the formations here somehow suggested “buttermilk” to visitors… though it is very hard to see any logic in that. I finally looked it up, and apparently the name goes back to the 1870s when a dairy supposedly operated in the area. (It seems like an odd place for a dairy, but I confess that my dairy experience is… limited.)

The area interests me photographically on a number of counts. Perhaps most obviously, it sits right beneath one of the most magnificent sections of the Sierra crest, and open views of these mountains are available throughout the region. Additionally, the rounded boulders and other formations that attract climbers are plentiful and quite different than the usual east side terrain. It also is one of those wonderful Eastern Sierra interfaces between the high desert and the beginnings of the more alpine world. That latter is what we were looking for when we visited recently, navigating far enough on some of the rough roads that we got to where the small aspen groves begin. It was a lovely morning — a dusting of new snow was on the nearby mountains, brilliant sun was shining, and a bit of haze accentuated the distance between near and far subjects.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: rocky

Trees and Promontory

Dunes and Hills, Evening

Backlit Desert Hills, Morning

Aspen Grove and Rocky Hill

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