Tag Archives: wash

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

Canyon Wall in Reflected Light

December 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pink and blue canyon wall and plants in midday light reflected from a nearby cliff

This is the second photograph I made along this section of curiously colorful cliff face deep in the “narrows” of a Death Valley National Park canyon. I have visited this place a number of times – it isn’t all that hard to get to – and often found it to be a very challenging photographic subject. I have shot it before, but mostly made it work by including people in the frame or by shooting subjects above the canyon rather than at the bottom. Because it is so deep – and it lacks the beautiful reddish rock of the Southwest – the depths of the canyon are often simply dark and somewhat drab.

As I passed through this time I took a slower pace than sometime, and I’m sure I saw things that I had overlooked before. This was certainly the first time that I had noticed the pink tinge to the rocks in this spot, much less the subtle blue tones of the underlying layers, the interesting rippled patterns, and the glow of light from an opposite canyon wall. I almost kept going but something told me to slow down and spend a bit of time here looking around, and I finally decided to see what compositions I could make out of the cracked rock and very sparse plants.

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

Titus Canyon Narrows

December 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon road passes through the Narrows as light reflects down from canyon walls high above

Titus Canyon road is a well-known “attraction” in Death Valley National Park, traveling from the eastern park boundary in the Amargosa Valley near the town of Beatty, Nevada over the Grapevine Mountains and then down to Death Valley itself. It is also known as a fairly rough road, subject to washouts and closures after storms – not a true four-wheel-drive road, but certainly not for the faint of heart of those who are not accustomed to rough desert and mountain driving. (Many chose to forgo the long drive and instead hike into the canyon from its mouth, from which the spectacular “narrows” section is easily accessible.)

I have been getting to better know the country through which this road passes as I’ve driven it many times during the past decade or so. More recently I have been slowing down and taking nearly the full day to drive its length – and in doing so I am able to see and photograph things that I used to miss. Oddly, since it is often regarded as the main attraction of the route, I’ve often found it very difficult to photograph the narrows section near the end of the road just before it spills out at the top of a giant alluvial fan along the edge of Death Valley. Perhaps it is the predominantly gray color of the rocks – once you’ve photographed the canyons of the Southwest, California rock just looks so drab! This time I think I passed through the narrows section at what must have been just about the ideal time of day and season, and light hitting upper canyon walls was reflecting down into the bottom of the canyon and creating some interesting, albeit subtle, colors and soft reflections on the rocks.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Waterline Rocks, Sand, and Foam

August 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pacific ocean surf washes sand among shoreline rocks along the California coast

I’m often on the look out for these little coastal vignettes, and this one surprised me while I was photographing something else. We had traveled over to the coastline between Santa Cruz and San Francisco with no particular goal in mind – well, except for stopping for a bite to eat in Santa Cruz and then heading up the coast in search of the fog-sun boundary that we hoped we might find somewhere north of Davenport. However, even though the fog was visible off-shore and occasionally sent a few wispy clouds over the coast itself, we never did get quite the fog we were looking for.

We finally stopped at an anonymous spot along the road where I though I might be able to make a photograph out of a scene of rocks and waves as the coast curved away to the north. But between the time I had seen the shot and the time we managed to turn around, park, and get gear out, the light that had caught my attention was gone. But, being stopped and all, and standing there with my camera on the tripod, I figured I might as well walk out toward the edge of the bluff. As I did so, I had another specific shot in mind, but while heading to the spot to make that photograph I also noticed these rocks at the water’s edge and made a mental note to “work” them a bit before leaving. Once I finished that other photograph of the larger scene, I tipped the camera and tripod down to point at these rocks and watched to get an interesting bit of sea-foam above them. (I’d be lying if I implied that it didn’t take a few exposures to get this one that I like.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wash

Canyon Wall in Reflected Light

Titus Canyon Narrows

Sand and Cracked Mud

Waterline Rocks, Sand, and Foam

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