Tag Archives: zion

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

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Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants
Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff, Zion Naitonal Park.

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff, Zion Naitonal Park.

One unanticipated result of the pandemic restrictions on travel has been that I’ve had plenty of time to start digging through my archive of photographs made over the years. In some cases I have “discovered” photograph files that I had originally left behind, either because I didn’t understand how the image could work at that time or because I simply got distracted by other things and moved on. In addition to finding these “lost files,” the process of revisiting old work has caused me to rethink my original presentation of some photographs that I thought I was done with. This is one of those photographs.

The subject is in Zion National Park, where it is easy to find all sorts of interesting things along the red rock canyon walls. As I looked at my first take on this photograph, done eight years ago, I felt that I wanted to interpret it a bit differently. This version is cropped a bit more tightly, and I’ve handled the dynamic range of the scene a bit differently, perhaps retaining a bit more of the feeling subjects shaded by tall cliffs.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Snag, Red Rock

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Snag, Red Rock
An old snag stands in front of a freactured red rock cliff.

Snag, Red Rock. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old snag stands in front of a fractured red rock cliff.

Let me repeat a slightly embarrassing story that I’ve told before. For many years I did not bother to photograph in the Southwest. There are several facets to the explanation. I was something of a Sierra “bigot” — I loved that landscape so much that I could hardly understand why I would want to look elsewhere. In addition, when I was very young and my family drove between our California home and the Midwestern states where my relatives lived, I thought that our route through Utah was boring.

So it was only in the last decade or so that I finally “discovered” Utah’s beautiful red rock landscapes. My first visit was on a spring trip that took us to Zion, then across the state through Bryce and Capitol Reef (perhaps the most under-appreciated of these parks) and then to Moab where we visited Arches and Canyonlands. Since that time I have returned at other times of the year and pushed my explorations out beyond the boundaries of the parks, but this photograph comes from that first visit.

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 and Amazon.

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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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Leaves, Sandstone

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Autumn Leaves, Sandstone
Autumn leaves lie on the sandstone in a high country creek bed, Zion National Park

Autumn Leaves, Sandstone. Zion National Park, Utah. October 22, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn leaves lie on the sandstone in a high country creek bed, Zion National Park

Every so often I decide to dig back through my older file archives from previous years, and I almost always discover photographs that I had forgotten, that perhaps didn’t resonate at the time, or were part of batches of images that I someone never quite finished reviewing. This is one of those. It comes from a lengthy autumn trip to various places in Zion with a group of friends back in 2012.

I made this photograph in Zion National Park, but it could have been made in uncounted numbers of places in Utah — it has the basic ingredients: patterned and worn sandstone plus leaves. This scene is as I found it, a small vignette of leaves, some in colors matching those of the sandstone and couple yellow enough to stand out from the background.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Cottonwood, Kolob Canyon

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Autumn Cottonwood, Kolob Canyon
Autumn Cottonwood, Kolob Canyon

Autumn Cottonwood, Kolob Canyon. Zion National Park, Utah. October 28, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A bright yellow autumn cottonwood tree in a valley below red rock cliffs, Kolob Canyon

I have visited these trees — and this tree — in Zion National Park’s Kolob Canyon area before. I’m familiar with this beautiful little valley that runs up toward the head of a canyon bounded by red rock cliffs, and shaded from the early morning sun. Each time I have visited it has been a bit later in the morning when direct light was still blocked, but when ambient light began to fill in the shadows a bit.

A creek runs up (or down, depending on your perspective!) this little canyon, and it is lined with vegetation, notably including cottonwood trees. Higher up there are conifers, whose green color stands out against the red of the Utah rock. Further along the canyon narrows, twists around turns and disappears from sight. Although the colors might have been even brighter few days before this visit, I like the way that the colors of the foreground tree contrast with the more skeletal shapes of the bare and nearly bare plants beyond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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