Tag Archives: sky

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Pre-Dawn Sky, Amargosa Range

January 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sky above the Amargosa Range in pre-dawn light, Death Valley National Park.

I usually cannot resist the opportunity to photograph the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada when I’m in Death Valley. I especially like shooting there in the morning. I usually arrive before dawn since the pre-dawn light can create some wonderful effects on the ruins of the town’s buildings, especially if a few thin clouds and the right atmospheric conditions create some interesting light colors. So on this year’s early January trip I devoted one early morning to this subject.

As per my plan, I arrived at Rhyolite a few minutes before the good light started – it was very cold and no one else was there. In fact, I had the place to myself for the first half hour or so of my photography. I never know exactly what to expect when it comes to the dawn light. If things work out just right, and especially a bit later in the year, thin pre-dawn clouds will light up and color the light on the old town. That didn’t happen on this morning. First, I discovered that in the heart of winter, when the sun comes up a bit further south, a mountain right next to the town blocks the first light and it doesn’t strike the best ruins (such as the school and Cook Bank) until a bit later. In addition, on this morning clouds above the horizon blocked the light just a bit more than I would have liked. However… to the west and over the Amargosa Range things were rapidly becoming a lot more investing. This range was open to the light from the pre-dawn sky in the east, and high thin clouds began to pick up that colorful light that I had hoped might appear over the town. I put a long lens on the camera, moved to a position where I could get a fairly unobstructed view to the west, and made a series of exposures of this simple composition that allowed me to include a large section of the colorful sky.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Panamint Range to the Amargosa Range, Dawn

January 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Dawn light on the Amargosa Range and lower ridges of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

This is another photograph from an early morning winter venture high into the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park during the first week of the year. While the desert can be a rather drab place during most of the day, in the right conditions the colors can be nearly psychedelic for a few moments near the ends of the day – and this was one of those mornings for sure.

While many might wish for perfect, clear, haze-free atmosphere, it was the presence of some rather hazy conditions that created the wild atmospheric conditions as the sun came up on this morning. Light simply passed through clear air, but it illuminates hazy air and can make it glow. At this moment the sun had just risen and the light was nearly horizontal as it passed across the immense gulf of Death Valley to light the nearby lower ridge of the Panamint Range and the much more distant upper peaks of the Amargosa Range.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

First Light, Southern Death Valley

January 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

As seen from Aguereberry Point, first dawn light spills across the lower end of Death Valley.

I have previously photographed from this location high in the Panamint Range and overlooking a vast portion of Death Valley National Park and its surroundings. The view stretches east to 11,000+’ peaks in Nevada and west to the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and great distances north and south to places and features that I cannot identify. My previous visits had all been late in the day, and I had often wondered what the location might be like at the start of the day. So, on this visit to Death Valley, a trip to Aguereberry Point before dawn was on my agenda.

As usual, I awoke well before dawn at my camp site back at Stovepipe Wells. (You can often tell if there are other photographers about – in the dark period an hour or more before sunrise you hear people quietly get up, quickly start their engines, and drive away.) I headed up into the Panamints and turned off at the start of the six-mile gravel road that goes to this point, and arrived just before the first colorful light began to light up the sky – and I was pleased to see that there were some interesting clouds. I have been fascinated by this view over the shoulder of a ridge dropping down toward the Valley above Trail Canyon, so I composed a photograph that juxtaposed this diagonal with the end of the Black Mountains across the valley and the light-filled atmosphere beyond where the very first sun was coming across lower Death Valley.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

East Side of Bishop Pass

January 8, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Trail and meadows below the east side of Bishop Pass, eastern Sierra Nevada range.

This photograph comes from about a dozen years ago. I recently came across it while sorting through older photograph files for a variety of reasons – general clearing out of old images, searching for photographs of a particular subject for a client, and seeing what older images I might have missed when I first made them. When I saw this photograph it evoked a whole series of fun recollections.

Nearly weeks earlier, I had begun a two-week-long backpack trip along a section of the John Muir Trail. At that time, the only section of the JMT that I had not hiked (at least once!) was an area between approximately Shadow Lake and the Muir Trail Ranch – and this was to be the trip on which I covered this remaining bit of trail. The trip started just fine, though in some territory that is not exactly my favorite portion of the range – the low areas around Devils Postpile. After passing by that national monument we headed south, passing Duck Lake and camping at Purple Lake.

The next morning I woke up feeling a bit under the weather, an unusual experience for me on the trail. The next leg of the trip was to take us through an area without an easy exit, and I became concerned about what would happen if my “feeling poorly” deteriorated into actually being sick. I reluctantly decided to leave my group to continue without me, and I backtracked over Duck Pass and down into the Mammoth Lakes area and headed home. (Ironically, by the time I got out I was feeling fine…)

Ending a trip this way just didn’t feel right, so I hatched a plan to show up and run into my friends on the last day of their trip. Since they were coming out over Bishop Pass, I crossed that pass into beautiful Dusy Basin a day earlier, and on the next morning hiked down the canyon so that I could be casually sitting on a rock as they came up the trail from LeConte Canyon. I have rarely seen people as surprised as they were when they found me! After our reunion and joining them for their last trail night, the next morning we were up early to hike out over Bishop Pass. This photograph was made shortly after we crossed the pass and began our descent to the trailhead.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sky

Pre-Dawn Sky, Amargosa Range

Panamint Range to the Amargosa Range, Dawn

First Light, Southern Death Valley

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