Tag Archives: usa

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

Zabriskie Point Badlands, Morning Snow on the Panamint Range

March 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light on fresh snow on the summit of the Panamint Range with Zabriskie Point Badlands in the foreground, Death Valley National Park.

After getting being frustrated by falling snow earlier in the morning when I tried to photograph dawn at Dantes View I headed back down to lower terrain. (Although I was not successful in photographing at Dantes View and, in fact, turned back before the summit in dense clouds and falling snow, it was quite an interesting visit!) I stopped along the way and made some photographs before arriving at Zabriskie Point.

At this point I no longer reflexively photograph at Zabriskie, though I will if something special or unusual is happening with the conditions. Having been frustrated in my original plans, I figured I might as well take a look around since I was there. I left the camera gear in my car and walked up the hill to the famous overlook to see what I could see. The dawn light – if there had even been any on this cloudy morning – was long gone, though a few photographers were still hanging out. As I looked about I noticed two things. First, the clouds were just beginning to thin over the Panamint range. While the summit of Telescope Peak was still socked in – it appeared to be snowing there – light was beginning to break through gaps in the clouds above the east side of the range and interesting shadows were appearing below the snow line. Second, the partially cloudy conditions were softening the light right in the Zabriskie/Gower Gulch area and the light in some of my favorite small gullies to the right of the observation area was looking somewhat interesting. (I have made a project of photographing them with a long lens.)

With no other specific plan, and two potential subjects right here, I followed one of those “laws of photography” that says shoot the thing you see now rather than continuing to wander around hoping that some other miracle crops up. (Sometimes this is great advice. Other times it is dead wrong!) I walked back down the hill to my car, grabbed my gear, and walked back up. I first spent some time photographing the nearby gullies. (I think I have a couple of interesting images of them that will appear here eventually.) But I quickly turned my attention to the interesting weather and light across the Valley, thinking about how I might photograph this wild and rugged scene without making it look like another Zabriskie Point image. I decided to use a relatively long focal length lens – which was already on the camera for shooting the gullies anyway – and try to fill the entire frame with a combination of close and far mountains and snow and clouds in the morning light.

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

Remains of a Desert Plant, Pebbles

March 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The skeletal branches of a dead plant against the pebbles of a desert wash, Death Valley National Park, California.

I came across the skeletal remains of this desert plant while photographing along the east side of Death Valley near the area identified on some maps as the Kit Fox Hills. I had just finished photographing across the floor of the Valley, capturing an area full of sparse desert plants backlit by the very last rays of sun, and the light had diminished after the sun dropped below the tops of the ridges on the west side of the Valley.

I saw this bit of dead plant near the edge of a wash among the rubble of many-colored rocks and pebbles that had, I presume, been washed down from the canyons in the mountains to the east. For a place that seems so colorless from a distance, there is an astonishing variety of color in these rocks. I can see greens, blues, various shades of pink and purple, and some that almost are orange. The branches are just as I found them, and the soft light with just a bit of directionality from the right fills the shadows that would otherwise be very dark.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Motorcycle Parking, Night

March 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Night photograph of a covered area for motorcycle parking at the front of a clinic, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This should be the final image in the recent run of night photography from Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, near Vallejo, California. To recap, near the end of February I joined my fellow night photographers from The Nocturnes for a “Mare Island Alumni” meetup and shoot. I’ve shot this location – virtually always at night – for something like five years now, and I still find new things to shoot on each visit.

Early on I mostly focused on what some call the “historic core” of the place – an area of dry docks, giant cranes, and old shops and factory buildings. Later I began to investigate areas around the periphery of this location and to poke my lens into odd little alleys and corners that I didn’t see at first. More recently I have begun to look at smaller and less obvious features of the place and I continue to expand the boundaries of the areas that I know and shoot. This shot and the companion shot I posted just before it are a bit of a departure from my usual Mare Island work in that the scene is a more modern sort of urban landscape illuminated by modern lighting that doesn’t have the warm glow of the security lights and other forms of illumination found elsewhere.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Metal Walled Building With Door, Tree and Lawn, Night

March 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Night photograph of a metal walled building with a door, sidewalk, lawn, and tree – Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

This is a bit of a different sort of night photograph compared to the others I have posted in this recent series. (Most of those were shot at some distance from my subjects – generally old, historic buildings – and in very saturated and colorful light.) Near the end of my evening shoot at Mare Island in late February I was walking back from a dark and lonely corner of the place when I passed a more modern facility, an out-patient clinic of some sort. This facility is something of a stark contrast to the surrounding area. The building is relatively new and the walls are not the usual brick and/or corrugated metal, but instead are a more modern-looking sort of metal paneling. There is landscaping, including small patches of lawn and small trees. And the light is completely different. Elsewhere in the darker areas of Mare Island the lighting tends toward yellow, coming from sodium vapor lamps, though it also includes green and occasionally other hues. But here the light is fairly neutral and actually looks almost white. I wasn’t quite sure what to do! :-)

But then it seemed to me that it might be interesting to see what I could do with this modern (though not flawless) structure and its surrounding landscaping. Here a small door, partly blocked by some sort of signs, leads into a very small section of a building and is lit a bit mysteriously from above. Sidewalks lead away from the door and a small, forlorn patch of lawn sits near the corner of the building, with a single leafless tree supported by stakes. When I saw this spot and when I look at the photograph now I get this feeling that there should be some story behind all of this… but I have no idea what it might be.

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