Tag Archives: slope

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

Trail Canyon

January 26, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light angles across eroded ridges and gullies on lower slopes of the Panamint Range above Trail Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

This is another photograph that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and one that I was virtually certain would be in black and white when I shot it. I’ve looked down into Trail Canyon quite a few times and tried to “see” a photograph that would somehow consist entirely of the overlapping ridges and layers of stratified rock, tilted at crazy and seemingly opposing angles. My previous photographs of this location had been made late in the day – when the light is beautiful in many directions from this overlook, but when the canyon itself is often shrouded in early shade.

I made this photograph in the morning. It was my first time at this location high in the Panamints at dawn instead of at sunset. I arrived on a cold winter morning before dawn to find no other people there and no wind. (The latter is a bit unusual here, but was certainly welcome, seeing that I would be shooting with long focal length lenses.) The first subject to shoot was the pre-dawn light on clouds high above the landscape. Then my attention moved to the first light striking various higher points within my range of view, and then followed the light as it worked its way down to lower elevations. After that I turned my attention more to guts of this canyon, but was not getting quite what I wanted at first – until the sun rose high enough to peak over ridges and begin to highlight the inner folds of the canyon as seen in this photograph. I made several different compositions, but in the end decided on this one that eliminates any extraneous elements outside of the canyon itself.

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

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

January 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Sometimes I don’t know at the time of exposure whether or not a photograph might end up as a color or a black and white image. However, I saw this scene as being black white as I made the photograph. It was made just a bit later than a photograph of a similar scene that I posted recently, and by this time the intense dawn color was gone and replaces by more subdued tones and far less saturated color. However, by now the early sun light was beginning to directly strike the lower slopes of the foreground canyon.

The large canyon in the foreground at the base of the two dark ridges is part of a complex sometimes called Trail Canyon. At one time there was a road up the canyon to the area near where I made the photograph – from what I hear it provided access to a mine down in the canyon. Some years ago the road washed out in several places, and the park’s policy now is to mostly let these old tracks simply slide into oblivion, thus allowing the terrain to revert to wilderness. This canyon, like many along the lower reaches of the major mountain ranges of the park, intrigues me with its huge gravel fan and in the way that it breaches the incredibly rugged mountains of the Panamint Range.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

December 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on a tree-covered peninsula along the edge of a subalpine lake with a talus slope backdrop, Yosemite National Park.

I think that the primary thing that first caught my attention in this little scene was the very twisted and curving tree about 1/3 of the way in from the right edge of the frame. I wonder why one tree ended up growing in such an odd way when its neighbors seem to have managed to grown in a straight and conventional manner? The light on these trees was coming from almost directly behind them, as the sun had just topped the ridge above and out of the frame. Because the talus slope is fairly steep, portions of it remain in shade.

This photograph posed a few interesting challenges, and they are probably not all immediately apparent. One that may be visible to those who are familiar with such scenes is the fact that back-light like this can create some very bright highlights that can “blow out” in a digital camera exposure. In fact, these highlights are what determine the exposure for such a scene. If accommodating the bright highlights makes the shadows too dark, I can either work a bit in post to bring back some shadow detail or I can make a separate exposure for the shadows and blend the two in post. That wasn’t necessary here – I was able to capture the scene in a single exposure. The second odd little problem was that swarms of mosquitos were flying just above the water all around the shoreline of the lake. Although you cannot see them in this small jpg, there were many, many little traces of the bugs in the air – so many, in fact, that I had to somewhat laboriously clone out a good number of the most obvious of them.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline Boulders and Trees, Morning

December 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Bright morning light on boulders and trees along the shoreline of a subalpine lake in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

This is yet another photograph in morning light at this subalpine Sierra Nevada lake where I spent several days in mid-September earlier this year. Like many lakes in this part of the Yosemite back-country, the shoreline is quite rocky, with lots of rocks and boulders left over from the period of glaciation. Here several very large boulders crowd against shoreline trees and plant, and the slopes of the far side of the lake are visible across the water, where trees and plants ascend rock slopes toward a talus field and then a much taller ridge.

These views across alpine Sierra lakes are always compelling. Whenever I camp at such a lake, the area near my campsite becomes my temporary home, and at first the other side of the lake often seems a bit mysterious… until I take the time, often early in the morning or in the evening, to do a circumnavigation of the lake along its shoreline.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: slope

Trail Canyon

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

Shoreline Boulders and Trees, Morning

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