Tag Archives: spring

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

Devil’s Cornfield

March 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Early morning light slants across the arrow weed plants of the Devil’s Cornfield area of Death Valley National Park

For the record, while I have no evidence either way regarding the role of the devil in creating this terrain, there is definitely no corn growing in this field! The plant is known as “arrowweed” (or arroweed or arrow weed), and the tall shapes are apparently formed as the sand erodes from around the roots.

This spot is one of several in Death Valley that have been hard for me to see as photographs. (Other “challenges” include the Devil’s Golf Course – which mostly looks like crusty, dried mud to me – and Salt Creek – which I’ve mostly visited at the times of day when the light hasn’t been idea.) I came close once before with a closer view of the plants that revealed their actual color a bit more and which placed them in front of a backdrop of more distant barren mountains. This photograph certainly doesn’t provide a strong center of visual interest, but I like the sense of the plants leading off into the distance, the angles of the blue shadows, and the contrasting warm colors of the plants in near golden-hour light.

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: Abstract, Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Visual Puzzle with Tree

June 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tree with early spring greenery against a backdrop of the reflecting windows of downtown San Francisco buildings.

On a mid-April walk though portions of downtown San Francisco to make photographs, while passing through the financial district I was these branches with new spring leaves juxtaposed with a conjunction of building angles, reflected and distorted light, and colors that created a wild abstraction.

The urban environment often holds visual attractions that are not always immediately scene and which sometimes require one to look past the more obvious grit and turmoil. (Those, too, can be a photographic subject… but not this time.) In downtown concrete canyons with glass covered buildings, there is a constantly varying world of wild distortions and conjunctions and perspectives. If you think about it, very little of what you think you see in this photograph is really “there.” The thing the fills the largest portion of the frame is a crazily distorted reflection of other building and sky, fractured and bent by the distortions from the glass – in essence you don’t really see this building at all!

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

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

June 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

An early spring snow-melt torrent flows over Impossible Tree Fall, Yosemite National Park, California.

This photograph takes me back to last year in mid-June, on the day that the Tioga Pass Road opened for the season. That was a very different year than this drought year! Back then the pass opened very late – though not the latest ever – and in mid-June there was still water, snow, and ice everywhere! One of the special treats of crossing the pass on the first day of the summer after a very wet winter is that the landscape comes alive with flowing water. Water is on the move almost everywhere. Rivers are full to their banks and beyond, waterfalls flow across almost every cliff, and there are creeks everywhere, including places that you might never have imagined they would flow when you visited later in the season.

This small cascade flows very close to Tioga Pass Road, tumbling down over boulders and a series of small benches and ledges. One of the most notable features is the single tree growing right in its path, seemingly “impossible” not only because its roots seem attached only to bare granite but also because it grows in the middle of a seasonal waterfall! I came upon the fall a bit later in the morning, when the rising sun was just barely topping the ridge above the waterfall, sending light down across the slopes and backlighting the tumbling fall.

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

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

May 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

I encountered this scene a short distance up the trail from the Temple of Sinawava area in Zion National Park, in the area below the start of “the Narrows.” Here the canyon of the Virgin River becomes quite narrow, eventually narrowing so much that the river often spans its entire width. These young trees, which were just beginning to show their spring leaves, are in along a slightly wider section where the river curves, and just be flooded during times of high water. Beyond, the river and the canyon twist right, left, and then back to the right again between the steep sandstone walls.

I’m always intrigued by trying to photograph these scenes of very dense foliage in which the frame ends up filled with a huge amount of detail. It is a challenge to try to create anything like an effective composition out of this complexity, and I think it is even more difficult to make such photographs “work” in the small presentation necessary for sharing on the web.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: spring

Devil’s Cornfield

Visual Puzzle with Tree

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

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