Tag Archives: sand

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

Creosote and Dunes, Morning

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Creosote and Dunes, Morning
Morning light on blooming creosote in sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Creosote and Dunes, Morning. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on blooming creosote in sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

On my recent Death Valley National Park visit I had an evening and a morning to photograph these dunes — other than that I stayed mostly in remote parts of the park. My ritual for morning photography here is much the same as it has been for years. I wake up in the pre-dawn darkness, planning to arrive near the dunes as the sky begins to lighten just enough so that I can see my way. I typically depart from a point that is distinctly not the “usual place,” and as a consequence I often have my area of the dunes to myself. After a 20-30 minute walk I arrive at an interesting portion of the dunes before the first direct sun arrives, and I. begin to photograph, continue on past sunrise until the light becomes too harsh.

I made this photograph just moments after the first direct sunlight arrived, light that was somewhat muted by haze and high clouds. The effect was to create very soft and low-contrast light. We tend to think of dunes as being transitory, but they actually tend to change their shape only very slowly, and I’m pretty sure that I have photographed this same little cluster of creosote in the past.

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

Sea of Dunes

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Sea of Dunes
Layers of sand dunes lead toward barren desert mountains, Death Valley National Park.

Sea of Dunes. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Layers of sand dunes lead toward barren desert mountains, Death Valley National Park.

Death Valley is often a beautiful place, but there are places in this landscape that can appear quite desolate if you look in the right direction. In many landscapes most of what we see is what covers the scene, but here the underlying geology is often stripped bare and we are left with a landscape of rock and sand. Even where plants grow — more places than you might imagine — they do not cover the landscape in the manner of forests and meadows.

This photograph is about that way of seeing this landscape. The dunes build one after another toward their highest point, much like waves on the ocean. Beyond this there is a rugged desert mountain range. This photograph is what I think of as a subjectively true image. While you would never find a scene that literally looks exactly like this, this interpretation is true to one way of seeing the place.

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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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

Dunes, Sunset Light

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Dunes, Sunset Light
Rim light on dunes near sunset, Death Valley National Park.

Dunes, Sunset Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rim light on dunes near sunset, Death Valley National Park.

For the most part I avoided tourist-popular places during my recent visit to Death Valley. However, I confess that I did camp in a well-known parking lot, uh, I mean campground for one night so that I could be closer to sand dunes. On that evening and again the following morning I headed out to some places along the edges and back of the dune fields to photograph this always-fascinating subject.

This photograph comes from the evening shoot, for which I headed to a spot where I find sequences of receding dune crests that are perpendicular to the setting sun. I aimed almost exactly in the direction of the sun just as it was about to drop behind mountains, and I performed some gymnastics in order to shade the lens and minimize flare. On a technical note, this subject provided the opportunity to use a special setup — a medium format zoom lens attached to my full frame camera using an adapter that provides tilt and shift adjustments.

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.

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.

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

Sandstorm Rising

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Sandstorm Rising
Clouds from a desert sandstorm rise above Death Valley National Park sand dunes.

Sandstorm Rising. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from a desert sandstorm rise above Death Valley National Park sand dunes.

Today I am sharing yet another of the Death Valley photographs from my spring 2013 visit when, among other things, I had a couple of opportunities to photograph in sandstorm conditions. Like many photographers I tend to photograph this location early in the morning and late in the evening, when the light is softer and subtle colors emerge in the fascinating shapes of the dunes. But the stark midday light can be interesting too, especially when the light is softened and diffused by a dust-filled atmosphere.

My roots are in black and white film photography, and I still find myself leaning back in that direction fairly often. I feel that in many cases monochrome can let us see the subject more in terms of shapes, textures, tones — less as an attempt at literal representation of the subject and more about how we choose to interpret it. With monochrome we explicitly begin by accepting an interpretation that cannot be objectively accurate, since the world is (almost) never monochromatic. In addition, we have more freedom do things during the post-processing stages (as we did in the film era) that we probably could not get away with in color, and the result still register as being “true.”

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.

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.