Tag Archives: sandstone

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

La Sal Mountains, Evening

January 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sunset light on sandstone towers of Arches National Park and on the distant La Sal Mountains, Utah

I was hoping to get up into the La Sal Mountains, in the Moab/Arches area, during this visit to Utah, but it didn’t quite happen. We had seen some aspen groves high on their slopes and thought they could make a good photographic subject, but we were twice stymied – well, once stymied and once we guessed wrong. The wrong guess came first. As we approached Moab late in the day from the south, we though we would turn off the main highway before reaching town and drive up there. However, a sign warning of construction and a road closure dissuaded us, so we turned around and continued to Moab. Later, thinking that if it was closed from the first route (and actually, it wasn’t) then there must be access from the alternative, we drove up the Colorado River Canyon and turned off to head up that way… only to encounter road construction! We could perhaps have continued on, but it was late in the day and we had not calculated this delay when guessing how long it might take to get up to the trees.

So, in the end, our views of the La Sal Mountains were from greater distances – from high on the plateau of Canyonlands National Park and from Arches National Park. On the day I made this photograph, the light had been “interesting” – a combination of blah, clouded-over light, with occasional bursts of beautiful light coming through breaks in the clouds. We had been out on the ridge near the end of the main park road and had really enjoyed those moments of wonderful light, but late in the day it looked like the breaks would end there, but that they might continue over near the section of the park where this photo was made. So we quickly got in the car and headed over that way. When we arrived, things did not look so promising. The large clouds that had begun to block the light earlier were also affecting this area. But there we were, and there wasn’t time to try to get to another location before the end of the day, so we headed up into this rocky area to see what might develop. From here, the La Sals were largely clear, with more sun than shadow on the face of the mountains. Even though there were clouds overhead at our position, they were increasingly broken as they led toward the mountains. Now all I needed was some evening light on the foreground rocks and I might have a photograph. I got my wish, with just a few brief moments of somewhat attenuated golden hour light on the rocks as the more intense light fell on the distant range.

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

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves

January 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single-leaf ash in a narrow sandstone-walled canyon begins its autumn transition from green to yellow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Now, coming back to this photograph quite a while after I made it, I distinctly remember that the gradient from yellow to green of these leaves caught my attention when I saw this small plant growing out of a crack in the water carved sandstone of this canyon wall. I’m often attracted by dark trunks and branches like those on this specimen, especially when they are seen against a background such as this pink sandstone with the patches of darker, lichen-covered rock.

The photograph was made in the same canyon in this national monument where I made a number of other photographs on this same very productive day – productive despite the difficult weather conditions, which were cold, windy, and a bit cloudy. Deep in the canyon and against this canyon wall, the best light is often that from completely clear daytime sky, since that sort of light reflects the best off of the canyon walls and carries with it the warm colors of the rock. Given that this was a tremendously windy day, the lack of leaf blur in this photograph indicates that it was made in a slightly sheltered area of the canyon and, no doubt, by waiting to shoot between the gusts.

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

Sandstone Towers and Cliffs

January 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sandstone towers and cliffs in evening light, Capitol Reef National Park

By comparison to some of the other well-known Utah national parks, it seems to me that Capitol Reef is perhaps a bit more difficult to get to know. Oddly, this might be partially because it is so easy to experience it very superficially. A main highway passes right though the park, and a number of the characteristic and iconic features are visible from the highway or by barely leaving it: the well-known orchards, accessible examples of rock art, large and impressive sandstone walls and towers, the Fremont River. Other features are neatly containing along an impressive “scenic drive” with some popular trails. But it seems that the steps to see additional aspects of the park are bigger than at some other parks. For example, while most Yosemite visitors think of The Valley as the park, it isn’t really all that difficult to drive paved roads to Glacier Point, redwood groves, or even the summit of the Sierra. But to go a bit further at Capitol Reef you might have to drive through a river, have four-wheel drive, ask someone about some relatively unknown canyon, drive for many miles on gravel roads.

My first visit to this park was limited to the most accessible features, as we were passing through on our way to another place. We stopped briefly to see the rock art, and I saw those iconic orchards of Fruita. On the second visit, we had more time – we were in the area of several days – and we spent time on the “scenic drive,” did a few of the hikes, and poked around the fringes of these area. We even drove the dozens of miles down that east side gravel road and took a long drive on less-used roads to return to where we started. On a subsequent trip, we asked around a bit, and ended up poking into a canyon where we were the only visitors and walking along a route high in the mountains on a sub-freezing morning. This photograph comes from the intermediate experience of that second trip. Although there was (and still is!) much that I don’t know about this huge and diverse park, by this point I was starting to get a sense of the rhythms of light and so forth, and this enable us to be at this (accessible) location at the right hour as the day came to an end.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

December 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Large cottonwood trees with autumn leaves along the Escalante River, Utah

In many places like this one along the Escalante, the terrain seems to be largely a continuous repetition of one horseshoe bend after another, and each bend encourages me to want to see what will be ahead. When the river bends one way, the bottom of the canyon may be in sunlight; when it bends the other – and perhaps narrows around the apex of the bend – everything may be in deep shadow from the tall cliffs above the narrow canyon. In these bends it is often necessary to cross back and forth across the stream as the canyon narrows. (That ritual was a new one to me as a long-time Sierra Nevada hiker and backpacker. There a stream crossing or two in a day would typically be about it, and we tend to make a big deal out of them. Here you might cross a stream more than a dozen times in less than a mile!)

The location of this photograph was at one of those crossing points. The trail approached my camera position from up the canyon and around the bend along the right (from this point of view) side of the stream, crossed the river down among the trees, and then headed across a low hill to the left that skirted between the river and the base of the cliffs. When I arrived at this point and walked underneath this wildly colorful group of cottonwoods, I thought I’d like to find a way to photograph them, the river, and the dark upper canyon. So, before wading through the water I went ahead a bit and climbed up on a sort of ledge to this overlook from which I had a good view up the canyon. Because it was a partly cloudy day, the light here was in a constant state of change. When the clouds moved overhead, the canyon and the trees become quite dark. But a moment later the cloud would pass on and the sun lit the golden trees so brightly that it was almost impossible to photograph them and keep any light in the background canyon. So I watched and waited and made this exposure when the clouds partially obscured the direct sun, but still let in enough light to brighten the trees and cast soft shadows on the bank of the stream.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sandstone

La Sal Mountains, Evening

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves

Sandstone Towers and Cliffs

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

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