Close-up photograph of a spring fern in forest shadows.
Photos are temporarily being shared without additional commentary. Watch for commentary to resume in late summer.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A desert wash curves past barren desert hills on its way to the salt flats of Death Valley.
Visitors to Death Valley might not immediately realize how much of a role water has played (and continues to play) in shaping the place. I like to point out that this location, known for its heat and aridity, is one of the best places to see the effects of water laid bare. The vast playa and salt plains in the valley are formed by water that settles there and evaporates. The Valley once held an ancient (and quite large!) lake. The alluvial fans — like that in the foreground of the photo — are laced with waterways, small and large. The present-day forms of the mountains result largely from water eroding uplifted blocks.
The location of the photograph is on one of the immense alluvial fans that descend from rugged mountains toward the playa. In this area the fan is interrupted by groupings of mostly-barren hills, many featuring darker rock, and they line up in interesting patterns. In the far distance, perhaps up to 50 miles away, lie mountains at the far southern end of the Valley.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
An alpine lake sits in a treeless bowl below the Sierra Crest, Yosemite National Park.
This is a very remote lake high in the Yosemite Sierra backcountry. For years I had visited areas a few miles away and thought about going here. Finally, on this trip — when I was again base-camped at that close location — I took a morning to wander over this way and explore this rocky basin with its shallow lake.
I looked at my map, pointed “that way,” dropped over a short ridge into forest, and headed toward this bowl. I was far from the first person to go here, but there was no trail and barely any traces of other people. (Perhaps I missed a more obvious route?) After a bit of bushwhacking the route began to climb up toward the lake and gradually open as the trees thinned. I arrived to nearly perfect solitude and silence, broken by the song of a bird or two and occasional shouts from climbers high above on a nearby peak.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A line of badlands terrain full of gullies with desert mountains in the distance.
This photograph embodies many elements that attract me to Death Valley National Park. I’m always impressed by the clarity (and seeming irony) with which the place reveals the effect of water on the landscape. Essentially everything in this scene is the result of water, from the gullies on the soft foreground formations, to the gigantic, gravel-filled wash beyond, and the the eroded mountains in the distance. That distance is another important feature — I’ve only encountered the immense scale of this landscape in a few other places.
It was still morning when I made this photograph, though golden hour had passed. We had photographed more intimate aspects of the landscape in the earlier light, and now we were moving on when we paused at this high point to take in this gigantic scene. Beyond the foreground hills, the flat wash stretches for miles to the base of haze-obscured desert mountains.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
