Tag Archives: usa

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

Dunes and Mountains

May 11, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Low dunes and the base of Tucki Mountain in evening light

This is a different interpretation of a photograph that I have previously posted. Here I have simply tried a different crop, one that eliminates some areas of from the top and bottom of the earlier photograph in order to focus more on the horizontal sweep of the shallow dunes and the more distant wash sloping up to the base of gigantic Tucki Mountain, here in nearly the last light of the evening.

I think that when we are in this place, one of the most iconic in Death Valley National Park, our attention is more likely to be drawn to the tallest dunes, which are located more or less behind me at this camera position. But there is much else to see here, ranging from the intimate landscape of ripple sand and small plants to the rugged slopes of Tucki Mountain just to the south, and including the many long views across the huge spaces of the valley. Here I had been mostly photographing an expanse of dunes leading off toward the northeast, when I turned around to see this view of the edge of the sand, with low dunes curving toward the sparse plant life at their edge.

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

Dust Storm, Dunes

May 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An afternoon desert dust storm obscures sand dunes

Where there are dunes, there will be sand storms and dust storms. The dunes are largely the result of geography that interrupts prevailing winds and causes them to drop their load. When unusually high winds blow through these areas and through dry playas, they inevitably pick up the loose sand and dust and it becomes airborne once again. The immediate effects on a visitor to such places at these times are several. There is dust and sand everywhere — you simply cannot escape it. The night before the wind and sand came through my camp. Fortunately I use a very strong mountaineering when I visit Death Valley since I’ve seen these winds and what they can do. So I used every stake I had, attached stabilizing lines to the tie-out points on the fly, and zipped everything up tightly. I heard the wind and the sand, but my tent was snug and secure. Others were not so lucky (or so prepared?) and all night I heard people outside in the campground trying to tie down flapping tents, recover blowing gear, pound in more tent stakes… or giving up and crawling into their cars. As tight as my tent is, in the morning there was a thin coat of dust everywhere inside.

The next day I headed up into the mountains where I figured it might be less windy. I spent a lot of the time in a deep canyon, and I did escape the wind. In fact, I was pretty much cut off from the outside world — and, therefore, a bit surprised to emerge from the bottom of the canyon into Death Valley to find that the dust was still blowing like crazy. The air was so thick that mountains on the far side of the valley were almost completely obscured, and as I drove south down the valley there were strong cross-winds and blowing sand. I stopped at this slightly elevated spot off to the side of some dunes, put on a long lens (in the relatively dust-free confines of my vehicle) and photographed the dunes, aiming the camera straight into the blowing dust. Yes, this is what a sand storm looks like. (And, yes, I’ve seen worse. Much worse.)

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

Hikers in the Badlands

May 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of hikers is dwarfed by arid badlands terrain near Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park

In the midst of all the recent Death Valley photographs, with this photograph I reached back into the archives to pull up an older image that had not previously made it out of the collection of raw files. Various things impel me to dig back into the older photographs to see what I’ve missed, and in this case it was a random visit to my website that I noted in my server log — someone had linked in to a photograph of some photographers in Death Valley from this 2007 trip. When I saw that I thought to go back and look at that particular photograph and update it just a bit, and then I got side-tracked and wandered off into that raw file collection.

I recall this photograph rather clearly. For some reason I had stopped at Zabriskie point on a morning that I probably expected to produce an exceptional sunrise — at least that’s my guess based on the kind of clouds in the photograph. If I recall correctly, the morning did produce some interesting soft light, but not the stunner that I thought might happen. (I rarely stop at Zabriskie, but I make an exception if the conditions look like they might produce something unexpected — but you never know until you actually go there before dawn and see what happens.) I remember looking down toward Gower Gulch and the trail to Golden Canyon and spotting this string of five hikers. It isn’t that unusual to see people on this trail, but they stuck close together as the wound along its twisting route, and I thought that this might produce some interesting photographs and reveal the scale of this landscape.

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

Dust Storm, Early Evening

May 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Warm light on sand dunes during an evening sandstorm

This was a somewhat strange weather day in Death Valley National Park, with thick and deep morning haze, apparently caused by dust storms some distance away from my location, and then the beginnings of a local dust storm later in the afternoon and evening. Since this is a windy time of year, dust storms sort of come with the territory, and I’ve been through a few. They are not a pleasant event, since they manage to work a fine silt into almost everything — tent, car, clothes, and so on. However, they are part of the desert scene and they can provide some compelling atmospheric conditions for photography.

As I crossed Death Valley near this iconic set of dunes, the sun was dropping toward the cottonwood Mountains to the west. The low angle back light obscured and softened the features of the landscape, and the late light was beginning to shift toward the warm end of the color spectrum. From foreground to the distance there is a sequence of layers: the foreground flats with their sparse plant growth, the beginnings of the transverse dunes beyond that, rising to the peaks of Star Dune, and far across the valley the base of the mountains range, whose details are essentially invisible here.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: usa

Dunes and Mountains

Dust Storm, Dunes

Hikers in the Badlands

Dust Storm, Early Evening

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