Tag Archives: season

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

Streamside Foliage, Autumn Color

November 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn foliage along a Utah stream at the base of sandstone cliffs

This photograph includes several things that attract me. For one thing, the subject is visually very complex — and I enjoy the challenge of trying to create a coherent composition from such subjects. For another, it includes several visual elements that I like a lot. One is the juxtaposition of foliage and red rock, which is found so frequently in the Southwest. Another is the state of the fall color transition here — it is at the interesting point where there are still quite a few green leaves, but where the transition is unmistakable. On top of that, the varied foliage includes a wide range of original colors, from bright green (and the autumn hello) of the main trees to the blue-green and dusty colors of the smaller plants at the bottom of the frame.

This little vignette is found along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, where the river provides water along its course to support a lot of rich vegetation. More specifically, here the river makes a curve at the base of a very tall section of sandstone cliff, a bit of which is seen beyond the trees. The cliff is so high and the canyon so deep that little direct sunlight makes it down to this spot, and instead there tends to be a lot of beautiful soft light.

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Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Aspen Trees, Kaibab Plateau

November 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Nearly bare autumn aspen trees on the Kaibab Plateau near Grand Canyon National Park

This story is partially about how I finally got to Grand Canyon National Park… sort of. Believe it or not, I had never visited this iconic national park of the American West. There are a perhaps surprising number of parks that I have not visited, perhaps because I’ve long been quite happy to go straight back to my Sierra Nevada whenever I had time to travel, at least since I was a kid. There is also my long-time failure to get to the Southwest, which I have written about before. In any case, I had failed to see this park — aside from through an airplane window at 35,000′ — at all… until this year.

I had arrived in Kanab, Utah late in the day. After checking into a motel I was considering things to do on an evening that didn’t look overly spectacular from a photographic perspective. As I looked at maps I realized that this area is a sort of gateway to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. (I really don’t do a lot of research before heading out to shoot!) Checking a bit more I saw that the road south from Kana could take me up to the North Rim. I had heard of that place. ;-) So, late in the afternoon I started driving, half expecting that I might not make it before dark, but I had no better plan. The road generally rises at it heads south, and before long I was in a beautiful area of high forests that believe is the Kaibab Plateau. Although it seemed to late in the season, before long I saw that among the many bare aspen trees there were still a few with leaves, so I started watching for them. I saw this grove near the end of a meadow and couldn’t help but stop and make a photographs in the evening light. I soon realized that I didn’t have a lot of time to spare, so I got back on the road and continued south, arriving at the rim of the canyon at dusk to find that most facilities were closed for the season and there were few people about. Yes, I could tell that there is a very big canyon there! No, there wasn’t enough light left to really photograph it. I walked along the rim for a few minutes, pondered briefly, returned to my car and headed back to Kanab. At least I can no longer be accused of never having visited The Grand Canyon!

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Low Water, San Luis Reservoir

November 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Low water at the San Luis Reservoir, Autumn

California is currently in the third of three years of historically bad drought conditions. Water is power in the state — and a lot of politics has gone on around the acquisition of water, the use (and misuse) of water, and the construction of water projects. I’ve lived in the state long enough to have been in the valley now filled by this huge reservoir before it was filled. I have a faint memory of traveling across the valley bottom in a car with my dad at the wheel, looking at things that he told me were soon to be submerged — I have a specific recall of a bit of roadway and a bridge. That valley is long gone now, having been filled by the late 1960s.

The reservoir is an unusual one. The water it holds is pumped up into the reservoir from below and stored from year to year, producing some electrical power when the water flows back down from the reservoir to the valley. Essentially, water goes both directions though the dam! At the end of this third drought year the water level is extremely low — as low as I recall seeing it — and some of the huge structures at the dam are well above the water line. This is partly a photograph of those structures, partly a record of a phase in California’s water crisis, and partly a juxtaposition of angles and surfaces and curves, all under beautiful hazy late-autumn California light.

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

Tall Cottonwood, Sandstone Canyon

November 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old cottonwood tree towers about streamside trees at the bottom of gigantic sandstone cliffs.

This is a well-known and heavily traveled location in Zion Canyon along the Virgin River in Zion National Park — yet a place that I’m unable to resist visiting when I’m in Zion NP. It probably isn’t necessary for me to name the spot, since most anyone who has been there likely recognizes it.

Here there is a bend in the path of the Virgin River, which flows along the base of a very tall section of the canyon, tight against the outside of the bend where the river continues to work on carving the sandstone deeper. Trees grow along the creek at the base of the red rock wall, and the curve of the canyon creates a feeling that might be described as being almost cathedral-like. The light is often subdued, at least during the seasons when I have visited, since the canyon walls are so high that the sun only rises above them for a short time each day. In the particular spot where I made the photograph, one massive old cottonwood tree towers above the rest.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: season

Streamside Foliage, Autumn Color

Aspen Trees, Kaibab Plateau

Tall Cottonwood, Sandstone Canyon

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