Tag Archives: sunrise

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

First Light, Capitol Reef

November 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First dawn light on the high ridges and domes at Capitol Reef National Park, Utah

Before dawn we drove across Capitol Reef National Park to the east, with a plan to head down the rural road that goes south on the park’s east side. We were hoping for interesting dawn light, but we weren’t quite ready for it when it arrived just after we exited the park and arrived at our intersection. The sun wasn’t up yet, but we could see a light show about to develop, with interesting light likely to strike the high ridge to the west and fantastic clouds appearing in the sky.

We quickly found a spot with an open view on much of the surrounding terrain, left the main “road,” grabbed camera gear and headed off to photograph. Within moment the first real light hit these domes and ridges to our west and turned the sky slightly pink. The formations were a good distance away, so I worked quickly with a long lens — and this light diminished within moments.

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

Sunrise, Capitol Reef

November 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn clouds about the peaks of Capitol Reef National Park

Finding sunrise light like this is a matter of getting up very early, making some decent pre-dawn guesses about what may happen later, finding a good location… and a whole bunch of plain dumb luck. Oh, and persistence helps, too — if you are out there a lot you will inevitably increase the odds that you’ll encounter the very special light. But no one can call up a small cloud centered above a ridge lit by first light that also turns the distant clouds shades of pink and purple.

Our primary plan on this day was to take a rather long drive down the east side of the park, though the ultimate goal was a bit fuzzy — it could have been a slot canyon I know of or it could have been a higher location that I had visited before. We started out in near darkness from our campsite, crossed the park, and then started south. As dawn approached, it was immediately obvious that the sky was just about to do something amazing, so we quickly found a spot with a panoramic view in most directions, stopped the car, grabbed cameras and tripods, and hurried to find compositions that might make use of this light. Since most of the interesting geological features seemed to be a good ways off, I put a very long lens on my camera and focused on small distant details. For a very brief moment, just as the first light began to gently wash over the high peaks of Capitol Reef, this intense color came to the clouds and one small cloud became visible against the lighter background.

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

Autumn Morning, Fremont River Valley

November 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Autumn morning light and clouds above the valley of the Fremont River

Technically this location is actually just outside of Capitol Reef National Park, but its close enough. The plan on this morning was to make a journey down the east side of the park to a somewhat more remote area, so we started out rather early. After passing through the park and starting the drive to our eventual destination we quickly realized that a fairly unusual and spectacular sunrise was underway, so we found the first available location from which to take advantage of the situation.

This was most definitely not a blah blue sky morning! A variety of clouds filled a good portion of the sky in several directions, though light was able to pass through gaps in the clouds to the east. Above the peaks of Capitol Reef to the west the sky was generally darkened by high clouds that briefly took on rosy dawn colors before fading. To the north were lenticular clouds, some lined up in formations that reminded me of California’s “Sierra wave” clouds. When I saw these clouds and this light, the obvious question was what to put in a photograph that included them — so I quickly wandered over the a high point above the valley of the Fremont River from which I could photograph across the sunlit valley to include the spectacular clouds and darker peaks in the distance.

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

Desert Dawn, Storm Clouds

June 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Layers of dawn clouds from an arriving storm above receding mountains and valleys, Death Valley

This photograph comes from just about two months ago, during a photography visit to Death Valley National Park. It has been a very strange weather year in California, and the strangeness continued on this trip. In early April, almost anything can happen with Death Valley weather… and much of that “anything” occurred while we were there. On this day, the main attractions was… snow!

The night before I had decided that it looked like there might be the potential for interesting light up high in the mountains to the west of the Valley. My hope was that the clouds of an incoming weather front my just be making their appearance over the mountains, but leaving the sky to the east mostly clear or perhaps with some interesting clouds around dawn. We were up well before first light and on the road. As it began to be light we could see that there were a lot of clouds coming in, and when we arrived at our intended shooting location the clouds were closing in quickly. I guessed that there might, just maybe, be a brief window of light as the sun rose above mountains on the far side of the valley and, for an instant, might shine light horizontally above the mountains and below the clouds. It didn’t quite happen. (And you can’t always count on the good light. You have to be out there in some light failures if you hope to be there enough to get the miraculous successes, too.) The best we got was a brief and fiery illumination of the undersides of these clouds, above darker lower clouds and the shadowed peaks of the Amargosa Range.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sunrise

First Light, Capitol Reef

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Sunrise, Capitol Reef

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Autumn Morning, Fremont River Valley

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Desert Dawn, Storm Clouds

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

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