Tag Archives: rugged

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

Titus Canyon Road

February 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon Road descents into upper Titanothere Canyon before climbing to Red Pass

Early December is a fine time to be in Death Valley National Park, and I managed to spend five days there this past December. The weather is cooler this time of year – in fact, temperatures dropped into the upper twenties in the Valley during my visit and well down into the teens in some of the upper elevations that I visited during the pre-dawn hours. Although seasoned Death Valley visitors prefer to visit during the cooler months, things seem much quieter than a few months later in the spring. In fact, I almost had the entire Stovepipe Wells campground to myself on my first night!

The relative solitude extended to this day, on which I drove over the Amargosa Range via Titus Canyon Road, the rough back-country one-way route between the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley itself. I know this route fairly well, having been over it a number of times. I always start in the morning, and this trip was no exception – I was well out on to the route when the sun came up. Often I just take a few hours for the trip, stopping at a few key locations. But recently I have thought more about how I might photograph some of these places that I used to simply drive through, and on this visit I slowed way down and devoted almost the entire day to this area. The location in this photograph is an example of the sort of area that I might have just passed through in the past. Here the road traverses the upper reaches of a very large canyon that eventually spills out into Death Valley far below. The location from which I made the photograph marks the high point on the route, and I always stop there – but on some previous visits I have just regarded the terrain as being empty. It isn’t, and I’m learning to see it more clearly. Here the gravel road drops down from the previous ridge, winding through the rough and dry landscape to the bottom of the canyon and its dry stream bed before climbing steeply up to my camera position.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

January 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden evening haze over the Pacific Coast below the rugged cliffs of the Marin headlands

How we ended up here on this evening in a slightly complicated and random story. Our main goal was to go San Francisco’s De Young Museum, where the big show of David Hockney’s work was entering its final days – we had been planning to go but somehow the time passed and it was now or never. I’d write, “It is a great show and you should go…” but it is too late! Hockney’s work is engrossing and compelling and includes subjects that a landscape photographer can identify with. (Hockney’s relationship to photography is interesting and, it seems, a bit complex. He is known for some photo collages that he created, yet he disparages photography or at least the way photography is often done. He apparently said something about photography along the lines of it being fine if you want to view the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops. Ouch!)

We spent a few hours in the exhibit and then it was mid afternoon. There were still a couple of hours of light left, so we decided to head across the Golden Gate Bridge, but with only the vaguest of plans in mind. (Basically the plan consisted of “Coffee and then look for something before the light is gone.”) By the time we got over there and were ready to look for light, we realized that we had only a short time before the light would go and we would have to head back over the bridge to get dinner. (We had reservations at a favorite Indian restaurant.) We realized that we had only enough time to drive up into the headlands on our way to the bridge, so up Conzelman Road we went. I missed a mysterious and ominous photograph of a large freighter in the haze outside the Golden Gate since I wasn’t able to find a place to stop and park – but we finally managed to park the car and get out and look around. I did not take my camera gear out at first, since I have more than enough photographs of The City and the bridge at sunset, but soon I became interested in the backlit glow around the rugged cliffs dropping to the water to the west and then the expanse of glowing, hazy air stretching over the water towards the horizon, where water and sky merged invisibly.

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

Titus Canyon Narrows

December 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon road passes through the Narrows as light reflects down from canyon walls high above

Titus Canyon road is a well-known “attraction” in Death Valley National Park, traveling from the eastern park boundary in the Amargosa Valley near the town of Beatty, Nevada over the Grapevine Mountains and then down to Death Valley itself. It is also known as a fairly rough road, subject to washouts and closures after storms – not a true four-wheel-drive road, but certainly not for the faint of heart of those who are not accustomed to rough desert and mountain driving. (Many chose to forgo the long drive and instead hike into the canyon from its mouth, from which the spectacular “narrows” section is easily accessible.)

I have been getting to better know the country through which this road passes as I’ve driven it many times during the past decade or so. More recently I have been slowing down and taking nearly the full day to drive its length – and in doing so I am able to see and photograph things that I used to miss. Oddly, since it is often regarded as the main attraction of the route, I’ve often found it very difficult to photograph the narrows section near the end of the road just before it spills out at the top of a giant alluvial fan along the edge of Death Valley. Perhaps it is the predominantly gray color of the rocks – once you’ve photographed the canyons of the Southwest, California rock just looks so drab! This time I think I passed through the narrows section at what must have been just about the ideal time of day and season, and light hitting upper canyon walls was reflecting down into the bottom of the canyon and creating some interesting, albeit subtle, colors and soft reflections on the rocks.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Dawn Light, Wheeler Crest

October 31, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light on rugged Wheeler crest following an autumn Sierra Nevada snow storm.

It had snowed all day the previous day, and I knew that the eastern escarpment of the Sierra would be covered in new snow at dawn. The dawn weather conditions were a bit of an unknown, but it seemed to be worthwhile to get up very early and be in position with a view of the crest at sunrise, so we headed up into the hills above Bishop and below the mountains to see what would happen.

There were clouds. This can be a good thing or a bad thing in this situation. Without clouds the light can be less special, but if there are too many, especially to the east, they may completely block the sunrise light – and that light on the eastern face of the range is what we were there for. There was some clear sky overhead, and it seemed that the clouds to the east over the White Mountains were at least somewhat broken. These conditions bring the possibility – but not the certainty – that the dawn sun may find its way through gaps in the clouds, spotlighting areas of the mountains as the light works its way across and down their east faces. In fact, it worked out this way. We first photographed the range straight on, mostly centering compositions around Mt. Humphreys. After shooting that subject I looked around a bit more and saw bands of light starting to sweep across the face of the cloud-topped and rugged Wheeler Crest.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: rugged

Titus Canyon Road

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

Titus Canyon Narrows

Dawn Light, Wheeler Crest

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