Tag Archives: rugged

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

Trail Canyon

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Trail Canyon - Morning light angles across eroded ridges and gullies on lower slopes of the Panamint Range above Trail Canyon, Death Valley National Park.
Morning light angles across eroded ridges and gullies on lower slopes of the Panamint Range above Trail Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

Trail Canyon. Death Valley National Park. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light angles across eroded ridges and gullies on lower slopes of the Panamint Range above Trail Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

This is another photograph that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and one that I was virtually certain would be in black and white when I shot it. I’ve looked down into Trail Canyon quite a few times and tried to “see” a photograph that would somehow consist entirely of the overlapping ridges and layers of stratified rock, tilted at crazy and seemingly opposing angles. My previous photographs of this location had been made late in the day – when the light is beautiful in many directions from this overlook, but when the canyon itself is often shrouded in early shade.

I made this photograph in the morning. It was my first time at this location high in the Panamints at dawn instead of at sunset. I arrived on a cold winter morning before dawn to find no other people there and no wind. (The latter is a bit unusual here, but was certainly welcome, seeing that I would be shooting with long focal length lenses.) The first subject to shoot was the pre-dawn light on clouds high above the landscape. Then my attention moved to the first light striking various higher points within my range of view, and then followed the light as it worked its way down to lower elevations. After that I turned my attention more to guts of this canyon, but was not getting quite what I wanted at first – until the sun rose high enough to peak over ridges and begin to highlight the inner folds of the canyon as seen in this photograph. I made several different compositions, but in the end decided on this one that eliminates any extraneous elements outside of the canyon itself.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk

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Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk - Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park
Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park

Kit Fox Hills and Death Valley Buttes, Dusk. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Post-sunset light on the Kit Fox Hills, Death Valley Buttes, and the slopes of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

The view of the eroded Kit Fox Hills and the larger masses of Death Valley Buttes beyond with ascending ridges and valleys of the Amargosa Range beyond is one that I’ve been working on for a few years now. During the day these formations are interesting, but in many ways not much more so than any of scores of other hills, washes, rocky ridges and so forth throughout the park and other desert areas. But sometimes the light does absolutely incredible things to these hills along the east side of the Valley.

I first saw this happen during a previous visit when evening clouds lit up in astonishing and almost surreal ways after the sun had set. As the sky to the west of Death Valley began to glow in the post-sunset light a wash of amazing and intense color began to fill the scene. I’m not even sure how to describe the color. Rose? Purple? Pink? Some combination of the three and more? At that time I was shooting from a small hill in a less visited portion of the Valley, and I I photographed a large “fan” along the base of huge mountains not far from Stovepipe Wells. While the colors in that photograph are, indeed, real, I have a heck of a time convincing people that this is the case. I end up doing so much explaining that I don’t show the photograph all that often!

This light is similar, though a bit less intense. The light was fading quickly at this point, and I only had a few moments of this particularly beautiful light, which might have been hard to see in person since it was getting late. I photographed this from yet another spot that it just a bit off the beaten track, though not far at all from some very popular areas. In fact, as I worked alone as the evening came on, I could swing my camera around and use my longest focal length to see hordes of people visiting and photographing another nearby feature, oblivious to the light in this spot far to their east.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Panamint Range to the Amargosa Range, Dawn

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Panamint Range to the Amargosa Range, Dawn - Dawn light on the Amargosa Range and lower ridges of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.
Dawn light on the Amargosa Range and lower ridges of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Panamint Range to the Amargosa Range, Dawn. Death Valley National Park, California. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light on the Amargosa Range and lower ridges of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

This is another photograph from an early morning winter venture high into the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park during the first week of the year. While the desert can be a rather drab place during most of the day, in the right conditions the colors can be nearly psychedelic for a few moments near the ends of the day – and this was one of those mornings for sure.

While many might wish for perfect, clear, haze-free atmosphere, it was the presence of some rather hazy conditions that created the wild atmospheric conditions as the sun came up on this morning. Light simply passed through clear air, but it illuminates hazy air and can make it glow. At this moment the sun had just risen and the light was nearly horizontal as it passed across the immense gulf of Death Valley to light the nearby lower ridge of the Panamint Range and the much more distant upper peaks of the Amargosa Range.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Sea Stacks, Rocky Point

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Sea Stacks, Rocky Point - Sea stacks dot the rugged Big Sur coastline at Rocky Point in evening light.
Sea Stacks, Rocky Point - Sea stacks dot the rugged Big Sur coastline at Rocky Point in evening light.

Sea Stacks, Rocky Point. Big Sur Coast, California. December 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sea stacks dot the rugged Big Sur coastline at Rocky Point in evening light.

Continuing with the theme of evening light on the Big Sur coastline, I made this photograph along a favorite section of this portion of the California coast not long before sunset. (I left enough time after photographing this scene to drive back up the coast to more or less the small road-cut just visible in the upper right corner of the frame, from which I made another photograph shooting back into a large cove that is out of the range of this photograph to the right.) At this time, perhaps a half hour or so before sunset, the color of the light was warming and intensifying but had not yet reached that obviously red stage that comes right at and right after actual sunset.

The peninsula in the upper part of the photograph is known as Rocky Point and, among other things, is a spot many may know because of a restaurant perched there above these stunning views of the Pacific coast. (I hear it is pricey!) My camera position was at a pull-out along the Pacific Coast Highway at a spot where the road rises to pass around another bit of land that extends to the west, and this high camera position let me aim the camera down to minimize the sky and fill the frame with the ocean, the rocky sea stacks and cliffs, and the “point” itself. With the main variable being the unpredictable patterns in the surf, I made a series of exposures at what I thought might be likely moments and then selected from among them in post. I like the series of diagonal lines in the foreground surf and the way the low sun picks off the tops of the waves.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.