Tag Archives: rugged

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

Amargosa Sky, Morning

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Amargosa Sky, Morning
“Amargosa Sky, Morning: — Early morning sky above Amargosa Valley and the Amargosa Range mountains.

Although this photograph is from eight years ago, I recall this morning as if it were last week. One day during my annual spring sojourn in Death Valley I decided to get up early and drive out of the park to the east, passing though the triangle of the park that extends into Nevada to get to one of the many ghost town sites in this region. The place gets a fair number of visitors — to the extent that it has more recently been fenced off to protect it — but on this morning I was just about the only person there.

Although I was there mainly to photograph the decaying structures, the remnants of this town sit on the edge of a vast expanse of open desert landscape. This view looks across the wide Amargosa River Valley toward the Amargosa Range that runs along a good part of the eastern boundary of the park. The light was stunning just after sunrise, and thin clouds were visible for a while until stronger light made them less visible as the sun rose higher.

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.

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

StRata, Morning Light

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Stata, Morning Light
Early morning light on eroded strata with contrasting colors, Death Valley National Park.

Strata, Morning Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on eroded strata with contrasting colors, Death Valley National Park.

This photograph is an example of the transitory nature of light — and how this factor puts the lie to the notion that landscape photography is something always done slowly, at leisure. That is sometimes possible, but more often the most interesting light is fleeting, there only for an instant and sometimes passing its peak before you realize it. Here the layers of colorful strata are in a small canyon, and the light is blocked early in the morning by hills on the other side, behind the camera position. Once the light does arrive, the shadows move down the landscape quickly, and the interval when the light is ideal is brief.

This photograph is also an example of finding balance between an “objective capture” of the scene, a photographic representation of “what it looked like to me,” and something extreme or even fantastical. You have perhaps seen other photographs of these colorful strata, with shades of red, yellow, blue, green and more. Such colors are striking, but they are often quite subtle. In flat or harsh light they are less intense than what you see here. Even in great light and with the kinds of post-processing that I do, the colors are still not exactly intense. I think this subtlety is part of the beauty of these features, and this is lost when the photographer pushes things too far.

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 and Amazon.

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

Dunes and Mountains, Evening

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Dunes and Mountains, Evening
Soft evening light on Death Valley sand dunes and desert mountains.

Dunes and Mountains, Evening. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft evening light on Death Valley sand dunes and desert mountains.

This is (yet another) end-of-the-day photographs from Death Valley National Park, made during the soft light time after the sun had dropped behind the Cottonwood Mountains behind me to the west. As wild as the sunset light is, I think I’ve come to love the softer and more subtle quality of this time of the day.

The photograph looks east across low dunes that stretch across a wide section of the valley here, in a place where nearby mountains disrupt the wind patterns and cause the winds to drop their load of sand. Beyond the dunes lie arid desert mountains, with strata and erosion laid bare.

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 and Amazon.

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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Detail, Desert Mountains

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Detail, Desert Mountains
Detail of a rugged desert mountain landscape in late-day light.

Detail, Desert Mountains. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a rugged desert mountain landscape in late-day light.

On this evening I was photographing out in the valley among the sand dunes, focusing largely on that landscape and it small and large features. As late afternoon transitioned to sunset and then the sky-lit post sunset light my focus remained primarily on the dunes. But after the light left the lowlands of the valley it remained briefly on the surrounding peaks.

The terrain in this photograph of a portion of the mountains is remarkably rugged and barren. What plantlike grows on these faces and in the gullies is both sparse and almost impossible to see from a distance, and the landscape appears to consist almost wholly of fractured and stratified rock.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | 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.