Tag Archives: valley

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

Wash and Alluvial Fan

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Wash and Alluvial Fan
Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

Wash and Alluvial Fan. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on a giant alluvial fan at the base of a desert mountain wash.

The immense scale of the Death Valley landscape is one of its most impressive characteristics. I’ve written that it reminds me of places like The Yukon, where features stretch on over great distances, so large that it can be hard to make sense of them. One day I decided to go to a location at one extreme edge of the park. Starting roughly in the middle of the park, the trip took me close to two hours of driving, the last portion on a gravel road. I also contemplated visiting another location at the opposite end of the park — it would have been close to a 100 mile drive in the opposite direction, with more than 40 of it on gravel. Driving direct between these two points might have taken six hours and covered close to 150 miles. From many high places in this park you can look across many tens of miles, often so far that the landscape may simply disappear in the distant haze.

It isn’t just the travel distances that are huge — many of the features of the landscape are so large that they defy an accurate sense of scale. The gravel fan in this photograph, spilling out of a narrow canyon at the base of one of the parks large mountain ranges, is likely about ten miles from my camera position and probably at least 1000 feet above the valley floor. It would take a full day to walk there, with no trail to follow. I made the photograph as the first direct sunlight had worked its way down the face of the mountain range.

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.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Wetlands

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Winter Wetlands
Flooded winter wetlands with broken-down tules .

Winter Wetlands. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Flooded winter wetlands with broken-down tules .

Places like this fascinate me. The location is in California’s Great Central Valley, a 400+ mile long feature running up and down the state, separating the coastal mountain ranges from the Sierra Nevada. Most people are probably familiar with it from driving through or across it on their way to some other place. It is largely agricultural, though these days population centers are expanding rapidly and parts of the valley are increasingly urban. Bottom line? It is hardly a place that most people would regard as a scenic attraction.

I get it. And most of my visits are more of the “passing through” than the “going there” sort — except in winter when I often make it my destination. Winter provides a relief from the valley’s generally hot and dry climate during most of the year, and wet areas appear when rain falls, especially where rivers meet and were old marshes once existed. The soft light and the expansive sky can be a relief from the urban experience. Here, wetland ponds are full from recent rains, and interesting tule islands stand where someone has chopped town the vegetation before the pond was flooded.

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.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees and Grass

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Winter Trees and Grass
Winter grass beneath a thicket of dormant trees on a foggy morning in the Central Valley.

Winter Trees and Grass. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Winter grass beneath a thicket of dormant trees on a foggy morning in the Central Valley.

This photograph comes from a particular moment of transition on a winter tule fog day in California’s Central Valley, the point when the nearly impenetrable gray blanket of the fog begins to thin, the view opens a bit, and the light becomes warmer and slightly directional. A half hour earlier this scene would have been almost devoid of color, and many of the trees would have been nearly obscured by fog. (An hour later the scene might be overly bright and harshly lit.)

This spot holds several things that characterize the the Valley at this time of year: the fog-to-sunlight transition, of course, but also the dormant trees along the edge of farmland and the very green newly sprouted winter grass. That grass is a distinctly California thing that often surprises visitors from colder climates, where the seasonal cycle is almost reversed. A spot like this will be dry and brown in summer and fall, but winter rains trigger our”impossible green” season as the plants respond to the moisture.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees, Levee Road, Fog

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Tule fog softens the light on a Central Valley levee road winding among winter trees.

Winter Trees, Levee Road, Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tule fog softens the light on a Central Valley levee road winding among winter trees.

My usual inclination when photographing a place like this is to focus on the natural and to exclude the signs of the human presence. It is perhaps ironic that I embrace the human world in my street photography but often obscure it in my other work. I think this comes from the desire to imagine a “natural” work without, well, us. There are fine reasons to do this, but there are also some reasons to not imagine that we are not part of the natural world. (This subject likely deserves and article, a book, a small library — not a two-paragraph post!)

During the winter months I often photograph in California’s Central Valley, attracted by the tule fog and by the migratory birds. And I mostly photograph these subjects as examples of nature. But the Central Valley is anything but a natural wilderness! It is crisscrossed by roads large and small, increasingly filled by towns and cities, and dominated by the agriculture industry. The good news is that those things are interesting photographic subjects, too. This road more or less winds along a levee at the edge of a large pond. I paused here to look back and the way I had come, photographing the road winding through a gentle landscape of tule fog and winter trees.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.