Tag Archives: smooth

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

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains

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Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains
Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains

Mesquite Dunes and Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft and hazy late-afternoon light on Mesquite Dunes and lower Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park.

The color of the sand dunes of Death Valley changes radically at different times of the day, in different weather conditions, and even seasonally. Many of the photographs of these dunes – the “Mesquite Dunes” in the middle Valley near Stovepipe Wells – are made in the early morning or in the evening. At those times the dunes take on the colors of sunrise/sunset light (generally very warm yellow to golden colors) or the pre-dawn or (better yet) post-sunset light of the sky, which can include a range of colors from blues to pinks to purples and so on. Judging by photographs you might think that the dunes are brightly and intensely colorful. (Or black and white, but that’s a different story.)

Most of the time the coloration is quite different from what we see at the early and late “edges” of the day. The less saturated colors at other times of day can be a bit more complicated to shoot, but they can also create some wonderful subtle effects if you happen to look in the right place at the right time. Late in the afternoon on this early spring day, there was some haze in the atmosphere – perhaps from some blowing dust and/or some clouds and moisture that had been around earlier. As the sun drops at Mesquite Dunes, it goes behind mountains to the west well before actual sunset. When this happens, the dunes are gently back-lit by soft light from the western sky, and the backlit haze mutes the colors of the dunes and, even more, the distant slopes of the rugged Cottonwood Mountains.

My idea here was to isolate the undulating shapes of the softly lit dunes in front of the background of the very, very muted colors and shapes of the lower Cottonwood Mountains, which are obscured by haze. There is some color in this scene, but it is subdued and edges quite a ways towards pastels.

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

Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome

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Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome
Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome

Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. June 5, 2010. a© Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Glacial erratics and trees at the base of Lembert Dome, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was made last spring in early June, when I drove over Tioga Pass on a quick one-day jaunt right around the time that the road was re-opened for the season after its annual winter closure. The road opened a bit later than usual in 2010 due to above average and late snow fall, and when I crossed there was as much or more snow than I recall seeing up there.

This was one of my marathon drive days. I started well before dawn in the San Francisco Bay Area and arrived in Yosemite in the very early morning and without any concrete plan – except that the ideas of visiting waterfalls and possibly getting up to Tioga Pass were on my mind. I did stop near the Valley first, where I made a series of photographs of Cascade Creek in virtually full flow. After doing this and making a very brief visit to the Valley, I decided to visit the high country along Tioga Pass road. I went just over the pass before turning back. There was so much snow still around that in most places it still looked much more like winter than like early June.

I finally started heading back to the west, as my plan was to return late to the SF Bay Area. As I left the pass and started down toward Tuolumne Meadows the light began to get “interesting” as the sun dropped lower in the west and some high clouds occasionally softened the light. As I drove past Lembert Dome I thought of photographing these glacial erratics that sit on the apron at the bottom of the dome before making one last stop to photograph snow-covered Tuolumne Meadow in the day’s last light.

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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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Ragged Peak and Lower Young Lake

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Ragged Peak and Lower Young Lake
Ragged Peak and Lower Young Lake

Ragged Peak and Lower Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 15, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The summit ridge of Ragged Peak is reflected in the still morning surface of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

On the final morning of my mid-August backpacking/photography trip to the Young Lakes area I awoke to some overcast to the east. Photographically speaking, this was a mostly good thing. As the morning light builds, it can otherwise become harsh, but when just the right thickness of clouds is overhead the light can be diffused a bit and the shadows are lit and the bright granite surface reflections are a bit subdued. In addition to having a bit of thin cloudiness overhead, there was virtually no wind, so the surface of the lake remained glass-like longer on this morning, and showed a clear reflection of Ragged Peak, the dominant feature on this end of the ridge that runs alongside these lakes.

The saddle to the left of Ragged Peak reminds me of a previous late-season to this lake. I thought I was the only person there – it must have been very late September or perhaps even the beginning of October – but in the morning someone showed up as I was sitting by the lake shore. It turned out that he was a “seasonal” – a back-country ranger during the summer months who did something else the rest of the year. We had a long conversation about a variety of things, including his musings about whether it was perhaps time to apply for a “real” job with the park service. Near the end of our conversation he mentioned that he had been over this saddle, so of course I had to try it. I won’t say much more about it, except to point out that it does not really have a trail and it ascends a very steep slope filled with very large boulders before topping the rough edge of an old moraine – in other words, it isn’t quite like taking the trail to Glen Aulin.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Last Light on Trees, Upper Young Lake

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Last Light on Trees, Upper Young Lake
Last Light on Trees, Upper Young Lake

Last Light on Trees, Upper Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 14, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last sunset light strikes trees growing on a boulders at the end of a peninsula at Upper Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

After arriving at Upper Young Lake with the intention of photographing a small, lone shoreline tree… I promptly wandered off and photographed a number of other subjects instead. (I mentioned elsewhere that I ran into John Sexton and Anne Larsen also photographing here, and John pointed out correctly that the tree would end up shaded at the time of best light. Need to go back in August for that one…) First I did a bit of reconnoitering around the west side of the lake, wandering down to and beyond the outlet stream, and thinking about how to photograph this rocky prominence at the end of a small curving peninsula. Then I photographed a bit near the drop-off from the upper lake towards the middle lake. After that I walked back toward the outlet stream again, noted the predicted shadow on the tree, and decided to focus my attention on this peninsula/rocky/tree subject, which I stuck with until the light faded.

When I began photographing this subject the low angle evening sun was casting its warm light on the rocks, trees, water, and even parts of the distance rocky slopes. As the sun dropped various areas began to fall into shadow and the light became warmer and warmer. I made this photograph just before the very last direct light left these trees.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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