Tag Archives: sage

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest

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Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest - Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson
Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest. Round Valley, California. January 2, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson.

In some ways this is a very typical eastern Sierra Nevada scene but in others, some of which might not be immediately obvious, it is atypical. I made the photograph while on my way to Death Valley in early January 2012. I had done the long drive over Tioga Pass (a first hint about the “unusual” issue) and was headed south to where I would turn east to cross the Inyo Range to that park. As I descended the long grade from Tom’s Place toward Bishop I passed through familiar Round Valley, but this little scene of sagebrush, Sierra foothills, and the crest caught my attention so I quickly stopped and made a few photographs.

The first and primary unusual thing about this photograph is that this was January! In a typical January the peaks here would be completely buried in winter snows – but this January the snowpack brought to mind mid-July. Although the season had started with early and heavy snows in October, things came to an abrupt halt and at this point it had been a month since real snow had fallen. A second slightly unusual thing is that I made this photograph in the mid-afternoon time frame. This is not a time typically regarded as being conducive to landscape photography. However, the high backlight was making the bluish haze more visible and the light was softened a bit by the high clouds, so I went ahead and made a photograph that, I hope, captures the somewhat harsh and dry conditions of the area and the season.

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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Joshua Tree Forest

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Joshua Tree Forest - Joshua tree forest in the Inyo Mountains near Eureka Valley
Joshua tree forest in the Inyo Mountains near Eureka Valley

Joshua Tree Forest. Inyo Mountains, California. January 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Joshua tree forest in the Inyo Mountains near Eureka Valley.

At the end of my January 2012 visit to Death Valley National Park, I exited to the north, stopping for an evening and a morning at the Eureka Valley Dunes, and then heading out to the north toward Big Pine. This was my first drive across this route, so I got to see some brand new (to me) California territory. The drive began by retracing the route along the gravel road to the dunes, then rejoined the main road – still gravel – coming up from the Park. This road was in great shape, well graded and wide, as it headed out of Eureka Valley and into the Inyo Mountains.

After entering the Inyos, it wasn’t very long before pavement resumed – which is a welcome thing at this point, since I had been almost entirely on gravel roads, some badly washboarded, for something like 65 miles or more at this point. As the road climbed out of Eureka Valley and up a mountain canyon it soon passed through fairly large joshua tree forests. Since I hadn’t eaten yet today and it was now past mid-morning, I took this as an opportunity to stop for some breakfast/lunch and to photograph these fascinating trees, here stretching across waves of sage and brush covered hills backed by higher hills that were still in shadow.

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: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Owens Valley, Tungsten Hills, and Mount Tom

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Owens Valley, Tungsten Hills, and Mount Tom - Massive Mount Tom rises above the Tungsten Hills and the high desert terrain of Owens Valley near Bishop, California.
Massive Mount Tom rises above the Tungsten Hills and the high desert terrain of Owens Valley near Bishop, California.

Owens Valley, Tungsten Hills, and Mount Tom. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. January 2. 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Massive Mount Tom rises above the Tungsten Hills and the high desert terrain of Owens Valley near Bishop, California.

When I’m driving to a photography destination, I often have to suppress the desire to stop and make photographs along the way. If I’m not careful, I can end up spending extra hours on the drive and arrive too late. (Sometimes I plan extra time for my long drives just to accommodate my need to stop and photograph en route.) I cope with sighting photographic potential as I drive by either pretending it isn’t there, filing it away for a later trip… or occasionally giving in and stopping.

As I headed down highway 395 on this winter afternoon, on my way to get a camp site in Death Valley, I was aware of the fact that if I took too long I would end up having to find a camp site and set up camp after dark when I arrived – and my destination was still hours away. But after descending to Round Valley just north of Bishop, California I became more aware of the interesting and somewhat unusually afternoon winter light and I finally just had to make a quick stop. The foreground Owens Valley high desert plants had lost all of their “green,” and now had a range of shades of yellow, brown, red, white, black, and even a bit of near-purple. Beyond them the Tungsten Hills began the rise from the valley toward the crest of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra, here dominated by the bulk of massive Mount Tom, a very tall peak that appears even larger because it sits more to the east than most of the other high peaks. The combination of backlight from above the range and high, thin clouds created a sort of muted sunny effect.

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: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite

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Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite - The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.
The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite. Rhyolite, Nevada. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

This was the closest to the winter solstice that I’ve visited Rhyolite, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by several things. First, the sun came up not only later, but also a bit further south along the horizon – and the light that would usually strike these ruins at sunrise was blocked for a while by a large hill that sits next to the town. Second, it was cold! Third, no one else was there at sunrise! This is a bit unusual since in the Death Valley high season (which arrives a bit later in the year), Rhyolite can be a pretty popular place… for a ghost town… in the middle of the desert… in Nevada. :-)

Because I have photographed here several times before and for the reasons mentioned above, I took a bit of a different approach to photographing the place this time. The winter light, some high clouds, and the different point along the horizon of the sun rise meant that the light was quite different from what I’ve occasionally had to work with in the past. At first I was a bit disappointed to realize that the direct dawn light was not going to strike the old Cook Bank and other nearby buildings. But when some clouds to the east obscured the direct light and high, thin overhead clouds begin to pick up color and fill in the shadows, I saw that other interesting lighting was going to make up for it. At the moment that I made this photograph, those clouds to the east (right) of my position beautifully softened what might otherwise have been some stark and harsh light on the pinnacles beyond the town. They also created an unusual and beautiful quality of light for a few moments – a reddish-pink quality from the light reflected from the clouds but with a few soft quality.

I decided to shoot from a distance with a long lens so as to control the position of the ruins against the background hills, and the longer focal length makes these hills more prominent than they would be if I shot the building with a shorter focal length from a closer position. This also allowed me to more carefully eliminate some distracting elements that invariably appear at old sites like this. (The first times I visited, access to most of the ruins was quite unimpeded. Now fences have been erected around some of them. Part of me regrets the loss of access, but the greater part of me understands that this will allow these buildings to be around longer so that more people will get to see them. I stayed behind the fences.) If you look around on the web a bit, you can find some wonderful old photographs of this town when it was a bustling place with thousands of residents, and when the Cook Bank was a very impressive and modern-for-the-time building.

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.