Tag Archives: southwest

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

Red Rock and Roots

April 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Long roots extend across Utah sandstone

This was a sort of casual photograph, made while wandering around near our backcountry camp in southern Utah. We arrived in the afternoon, set up camp, and had a bunch of time to kill — time to eat, make plans, hang out, hike, take a nap, and explore. I probably did a bit of all of those things, but eventually decided to take my smaller camera and wander off into the surrounding countryside.

Eventually I ended up ascending a sandstone hill, and from the top I had open views of the surrounding terrain. But the closer subjects were perhaps even more interesting — the curving shapes of the sandstone, the small hollows that were filled with red sand, the plants trying to eke out a living in this spare and rocky area. In several places I found plants that had sent roots or stems over great distances across bare rock, perhaps trying to find pockets of water or moist soil.

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

Juniper, Boulder, Cliff

January 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small juniper tree grows next to a sandstone boulder at the bottom of a cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

I’m digging back into the October Utah photographs yet again for this one. It comes from Capitol Reef National Park, where I spent about three days out of a longer visit to Utah. I started in far southwest Utah, wandered a bit in the Vermillion Cliffs area, followed a back road north to highway 12, then headed over Boulder Mountain to the Park, where I met a friend and got a campsite for a few days.

I’m gradually pushing out the boundaries of my knowledge of this park, and part of that growth on this trip involved shooting in some tricky light. On this late afternoon, between some other subjects, we ended up in a well-traveled canyon as the tall canyon walls and some cloudiness softened the light. After reaching our furthest point in the canyon we turned around and started back, and as we passed back through one twisting section we saw several interesting photographic possibilities, stopped, and spent a bit of time looking and photographing. This small juniper tree stood in front of an old red rock boulder, and the green of the tree and red of the rock complemented one another. I was also fascinated by the complex, angled, and sometimes-curving patterns on the vertical cliff wall in the background.

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

Fractured Stone, Desert Plants

December 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sparse desert plants grow among fractured sandstone slabs

Though the title of this photograph mentions plants, there are small and rather hard to see. In terrain like this that should probably not be surprising, since I made the photograph in a place that was very rocky and rugged. I had walked out a bit into the landscape to get a view into a nearby gully that marked the beginning of a much larger canyon when I looked down and noticed these patterned rocks.

Here the rocks are almost entirely in layers, or strata, as is typical in this part of the Southwest. We most easily notice the huge, think layers than make up cliffs like those found elsewhere in this national park. But there are also some very thin layers, and these rocks comprise on such layer that happened to be exposed at this particular spot. If I recall correctly, I first noticed this as I came to the edge of a drop-off and noticed that these were the rocks at its edge. They are apparently are hard enough to resist erosion a bit more than the underlying material. This also explains why, a moment later, I stepped back from this edge — the harder rocks actually extended out over the drop-off a bit where the underlying ground had eroded!

Photographs: Photographers

Photographer David Hoffman

November 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Photographer David Hoffman works the late afternoon canyon light at Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park is, of course, a spectacular place to make photographs, with a wide variety of potential subjects ranging from the obvious icons to things that are possibly not as immediately obvious. I’ve had the good fortune to photograph there on perhaps four occasions now. Each time I visit I discover new aspects of the park that I had not previously known. My first visit was largely to the popular and accessible tourist areas near the Fruita district. A second visit took me to another side of the park over gravel roads. A third visit went beyond those roads to investigate some less known areas that required some advance knowledge and hiking.

The fourth visit was a bit different from each of the others. After photographing alone elsewhere in Utah, and before meeting some other photographers to “work” a more remote area, Dave and I met up for a few days in Capitol Reef. Since it was his first visit to the place, we combined photography of some accessible areas with visits to a few of the areas that are a bit more off the beaten track, and we visited some of the familiar areas at odd times when few others were there. Here, Dave is photographing the rocks and walls of one of the many canyons in the park.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: southwest

Red Rock and Roots

Juniper, Boulder, Cliff

Fractured Stone, Desert Plants

Photographer David Hoffman

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