Tag Archives: sandstone

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Maple Leaves and Sandstone

July 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fallen autumn maple leaves lie on pink sandstone slabs in the high country of Zion National Park

Wind is not usually the photographer’s friend, at least when the photographer is shooting natural subjects that include foliage. Later on this trip we were stymied by strong winds when shooting in the Escalante River Canyon, as the trees and leaves were being whipped around in the gale. But the same winds that create these problems – and I was experiencing some of them with tree photographs on this day, too – also bring down the autumn leaves and in the right conditions can create a thick carpet of the wild fall colors.

This photograph, like quite a few I have shared recently, was made in the bottom of a wash where leaves tend to collect, but by means of water flow and, as here, due to the wind. These maple leaves ranged in color from yellow-gold through orange to almost red, and here they littered the rocks in the bottom of the channel. Like spring flowers, these colors are a fleeting thing, and the leaves on the ground quickly blow away or turn brittle and brown.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Color, Canyon Walls

July 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn color foliage marches up the lower slopes of Zion Canyon, Utah

I was in Zion three times during October this year – it is a long story how that happened! On the final occasion, we were passing through the area on our way back to California at the very end of the month, having stayed the night before in Kanab and having a plan to stage the next day’s long return drive from St. George, Utah. The drive between those Kanab and St. George is not all that long, so we figured we would see what Zion might offer up as we passed through. Since we had photographed the high country along the Mount Carmel Highway earlier in the month, and since the fall color was rumored to be starting in Zion Canyon, we decided to head there in the morning. (In the end, we finished up here a bit sooner than we might have, so we ended up driving well past St. George, but that’s a different story…)

The height of the Zion Canyon color typically comes a bit later than this, so we figured that we might not see the very best color – but Zion is sort of like Yosemite in that there is something to see no matter what. After many days of shooting, this was one of those days when energy was at a bit of a low ebb. We started out in the upper end of the canyon, where we found some colorful red maples, but I don’t think any of use were necessarily quite “seeing it” at this point. So we moved down that canyon a bit, looking for whatever might turn up, and hoping for a bit more color that we were seeing. One of the last places we stopped to shoot was in this area from which features such as the Great White Throne and The Organ are visible. Here we were a bit more inspired, since there was a variety of things to see: the Virgin River, the flats along the river in the bottom of the canyon, a decent amount of developing fall color, towering rock walls, and evolving light. As I poked around along the river bottom I saw that some very colorful trees were visible up high along the base of the steepest cliff walls.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Patterns

July 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Complex patterns in sandstone formations at Zion National Park

I’m certainly no geologist, but that doesn’t keep me from being somewhat amazed by the fantastical and convoluted shapes and conjunctions in this little detail of cross-bedded sandstone photographed in the Zion National Park high country. As I understand it, these rocks originated in sand that was laid down, perhaps as dunes, in the distant past. For a variety of reasons, layers that originally tilted one direction ended up butted up against or nudging into layers tilting in radically different directions. My untrained eyes count a number of such layers in this small bit of rock. Overlaid on this are eroding flakes, cracks, bits of vegetation, lichen, and more – and all of it on this intensely colorful Southwest rock.

I am not certain precisely where this bit of geology was photographed, beyond recalling that it was along the Mount Carmel Highway through Zion National Park and that the photograph was made in shaded and diffused light. I am not only intrigued by the disjunct lines and angles of the underlying rock here, but also by odd features such as the big curve running across the middle of the frame and the subtle differences in the coloration of the rock – in places it is quite pink, verging on redness, while in others it is almost somewhat purple.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sandstone

Sand and Cracked Mud

Maple Leaves and Sandstone

Autumn Color, Canyon Walls

Sandstone Patterns

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