Tag Archives: sandstone

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

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Ledge With Fallen Rocks - Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park
Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park

Ledge With Fallen Rocks. Arches National Monument, Utah. April 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park.

I made this photograph fairly early in the morning at the Park Avenue area of Arches National Park. While morning might was hitting the walls behind my camera position, the walls in front of me were still in fairly deep shade. However, as the sun rose, its light began to come over the tops of these tall sandstone walls and spill down into the canyon. As the morning wore on, the light/shadow line began to move back closer to this wall, first illuminating the ledge and the fallen rocks in holds and then beginning to highlight edges of some of the cracks in the wall itself.

The Park Avenue area seems like one of the most accessible areas of this park being only a short distance inside the park boundaries and being very close to the roadway. The area is essentially a canyon between two nearly parallel walls of sandstone, often topped with remarkable towers and other features as the canyon descends toward where it opens up into sage brush country below. At this particular hour of this particular morning, as wonderful as that scene was, the light shooting down the canyon was only so-so, so I looked around, put on a long lens, and photographed smaller vignettes of the landscape such as this one.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach

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Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach - A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.
A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.

Seaweed and Sandstone, Weston Beach. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A twisted piece of seaweed tossed onto sandstone rocks at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve.

Bits of sea life-like this illustrate one of the great reasons to walk slowly and carefully along the shoreline with eyes wide open. I photographed this section of dried seaweed just as I found it, lying on this stratified bit of sandstone on Weston Beach at Point Lobos. It is hard to imagine how a plant that, I presume, might have been fairly straight underwater, ended up in such a wonderfully twisted shape and to sit on this bit of rock with its own shallow curve.

I was a bit surprised to find this and some similar nearby examples on this beach. I’m used to coming here in the high-wave months of winter, when storm surf can cast all sorts of interesting things far up on the beaches and beyond the usual high-water line. But at this time of year the surf is often a lot calmer, as it was on this day, and I don’t expect to see nearly as much “stuff” washed up.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall

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Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall - A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.
A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

Tree, Fractured Sandstone Wall. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone tree stands against the fractured textures of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

Time for one more Zion photograph. Actually, it may not be quite the last from this April visit to that park and other beautiful areas of Utah. It almost doesn’t matter exactly where this photograph was made, since red rock and green trees can be found all over the area. Basically we were driving along a park road in the afternoon, with eyes wide open and looking about for photographic subjects, when we stopped alongside a section of the cliff that was still mostly in the shade, and in front of which beautiful trees were growing.

I liked the conjunction of the hard, reddish rock with its vertical cracks and horizontal patterns… with a single living thing, the very green tree growing up against the cliff face in the shade. Sometimes the colors of the rock can seem almost unreal. I feel a bit that way now when I look at the intense red-yellow colors in the upper right corner of the frame.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone, Cliff-Dwelling Plants

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Sandstone, Cliff-Dwelling Plants - A few plants grow in cracks in the face of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah
A few plants grow in cracks in the face of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah

Sandstone, Cliff-Dwelling Plants. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A few plants grow in cracks in the face of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

This is most certainly not an “icon” photograph of Zion! It is essentially a nondescript little bit of high country sandstone with a few plants, photographed along the Mount Carmel highway through the park in a spot where a shadowed cliff face was washed with light reflected from another rocky face behind me and on the opposite side of a narrow section of the canyon. This softer and more diffused light filled the shadowed areas yet was warmer in color than the very early- and late-day light that can also be as soft.

I’m used to seeing these examples of desert plants that seem barely alive, consisting largely of tough and dry branches and often not having much green at all. I see such things a lot, for example, when I photograph in Death Valley or in some of the high desert areas east of the Sierra. What was new to me here was the juxtaposition of these dry country plants with the rich, warm tones of the southwest sandstone.

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.