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gdanmitchell
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · (Still more from) Death Valley


I am still working on the images I brought back from two trips to Death Valley in the past few months. In a familiar process, some images speak immediately, and I share them soon after returning from the field. Others take longer to figure out. (Some won't make sense to me until I return to the collection in a year or two.)

In any case, here are a few more from the second visit back in late March. I've included one that isn't precisely a landscape —‚ it is the two of us taking a break for lunch out at the end of a backcountry road.

About the "(Still more from)" part of the post title: This is the sixth set of photographs from this season's photographing in DEVA that I have shared here. I was there near the end of January (the first three sets) and again at the end of March (the next two and this one). Here are links to the other sets for those who may be inclined to take a look:

Winter in Death Valley: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1741191
Winter in Death ValleyII: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1742238/
Winter in Death Valley III: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1744963/
Back to Death Valley: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1751444/
Back to Death Valley II: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1752613/0

Yeah, I'm kind of a fan of the place. :-)

Dan


http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/BlackAndWhite/DuneSummitIbexBW20220330.jpg
"Dune Summit"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/BadlandsDistantMountainsDawnSaltCreek20220330.jpg
"Badlands and Distant Mountains, Dawn"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/WindingCanyonMonrHazeVert20220331.jpg
"Winding Canyon #2"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/CreosoteCurvingDunesIbex20220330.jpg
"Creosote and Curving Dunes"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/IntoLightMarbleCanyon20220331.jpg
"Toward the Light"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/BadlandsTexturesMorning20Mule20220331.jpg
"Badlands Valley"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/NaturalWorld/TheLandscape/California/Desert/DeathValley/Color/DesertMountainsAndValleyTwentyMuleTeam20220331.jpg
"Desert Mountains and Valley"

http://gallery.gdanmitchell.com/gallery/var/albums/HumanWorld/People/Photographers/LunchDanPattyInyoMine20220329.jpg
"Desert Lunch" (And the third attempt at getting the self-timer to work. :-) )


Edited on May 01, 2022 at 03:40 PM · View previous versions
May 01, 2022 at 01:16 PM
KMSlandscape
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Desert Lunch is definitely the best... !

I really like (besides lunch) the first dunes shot; I think the vertical composition gives it a powerful feeling, yet the soft low contrast light has a soothing effect.
Second image "Badlands and Distant Mountains, Dawn" has nice soft, not overdone colors. At first I was thinking it might benefit from cropping out a bit of foreground but that doesn't work. Perhaps darken the top portion of the sky (graduated or whatever) to keep the viewers eye in the frame and work with the foreground?
My first impression of "Creosote and Curving Dunes" was to clone out the two distracting bushes... but that now that I look at it again, I think they add to the image by giving it a sense of depth.
Ken
May 01, 2022 at 03:01 PM
Jim Dockery
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Great layering in all of these. The first shot is classic clean dunes - smooth sand and sinuous curves nicely processed.
May 01, 2022 at 03:08 PM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Jim Dockery wrote:
Great layering in all of these. The first shot is classic clean dunes - smooth sand and sinuous curves nicely processed.

- - -

KMSlandscape wrote:
Desert Lunch is definitely the best... !

I really like (besides lunch) the first dunes shot; I think the vertical composition gives it a powerful feeling, yet the soft low contrast light has a soothing effect.
Second image "Badlands and Distant Mountains, Dawn" has nice soft, not overdone colors. At first I was thinking it might benefit from cropping out a bit of foreground but that doesn't work. Perhaps darken the top portion of the sky (graduated or whatever) to keep the viewers eye in the frame and work with the foreground?
My first impression of "Creosote and Curving Dunes" was to...Show more →

- - -

Thanks, both of you! :-)

KMSlandscape, I appreciate your close look at the photographs. I think it deserves a reply!

"Badlands and Distant Mountains, Dawn" gave me a lot of trouble! The original included even more sky (and a bit more foreground and at the edges, too.) It is an image that required a lot of attention in post, both on account of framing issues and the subtety of the light. (I know some of those colors don't look subtle, but the balance between them was a challenge.) I agree that the question of the upper sky is a challenging one. I thought about a wider 16:9 format, but when I tried it that wasn't quite successful either.

The observation about the foreground (the two little creosote plants) is interesting. I photographed this particular section of the dunes in several different ways — landscape and portrait modes, and composing so that nothing but dunes was included. My favorite photograph of this subject is one that only includes the dune patterns and which is more tightly cropped. I think I shared it in one of the earlier posts linked above. The idea here was to use those bushes to indicated more front-to-back depth in the scene, but it was a version of the scene that took me a bit longer to warm up to. (I still prefer that other one that I just mentioned!)

Dan
May 02, 2022 at 10:27 AM
Brad Williams
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Another great set of Death Valley photos Dan! Nice work!
May 02, 2022 at 12:15 PM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Brad Williams wrote:
Another great set of Death Valley photos Dan! Nice work!

Thanks, Brad. This time I'm pretty certain that it will be the last set from this year's visits.

Dan
May 03, 2022 at 08:01 PM
fotofoow
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · (Still more from) Death Valley


I too have become a fan of Death Valley, spending considerable time in the park. Your images evoke that feeling of awe I get when I visit. My favorite of the set is Creosote and Curving Dunes. Very deft handling of the delicate shades in this image.


May 03, 2022 at 08:44 PM
Starfire8
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Another magical series from the most amazing National Park in the system! I wish many times that I lived closer to this land of infinite moods and compositions! My favorites are #2 Badlands and Distant Mountains and #3, Winding Canyon. The common desert haze is prevalent in these images and I love the sense of depth that it provides. Beautiful color in the 2nd one, also. Thank you for sharing all 6 of your series on Death Valley with us. It has been a real inspiration for me to keep working on tighter compositions in my own work.

Best regards, David
May 04, 2022 at 10:03 AM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · (Still more from) Death Valley


fotofoow wrote:
I too have become a fan of Death Valley, spending considerable time in the park. Your images evoke that feeling of awe I get when I visit. My favorite of the set is Creosote and Curving Dunes. Very deft handling of the delicate shades in this image.

Starfire8 wrote:
Another magical series from the most amazing National Park in the system! I wish many times that I lived closer to this land of infinite moods and compositions! My favorites are #2 Badlands and Distant Mountains and #3, Winding Canyon. The common desert haze is prevalent in these images and I love the sense of depth that it provides. Beautiful color in the 2nd one, also. Thank you for sharing all 6 of your series on Death Valley with us. It has been a real inspiration for me to keep working on tighter compositions in my own work.

Best regards, David

Thanks to both of you!

It is a wonderful place of almost endless variety. My first visit was in the late 1990s, and my first view of the Valley as I unzipped my tent door at Emigrant Camp (where we had arrived in darkness the night before) sticks with me and comes back to mind every time I cross Towne Pass.

I've been visiting every year since the early 2000s, and I still find new things on every visit. At this point I typically combine return visits to places that I am still working on with exploration of areas that I haven't been to before. This year, in addition to one very familiar place that some of you might recognize, I went back to a place that I first visited last season, a place that is so large and diverse that I probably have a few more seasons of discovery there. I also went to a location that I've thought about for years but which had somehow eluded me. And then, on my second visit this year, I went back to it a second time. I also explored one new backcountry road that I had managed to overlook.

In addition to the diverse landscapes of the place (low desert to alpine, grand and open to constrained and intimate, etc.) the park has an unusually rich combination of natural and human history.

Thanks, too, for the comment on composition. That's something I think about a lot, perhaps even more than locations.

Dan
May 05, 2022 at 07:19 PM
iamkuni
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · (Still more from) Death Valley


Damn these are amazing


May 06, 2022 at 05:07 PM
gdanmitchell
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · (Still more from) Death Valley


iamkuni wrote:
Damn these are amazing

Thanks!

In case anyone else is still looking at this thread, here are the links to all six posts in the series — in total that close to 50 photographs, which feels like a pretty good haul for one season in the park:

Winter in Death Valley: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1741191
Winter in Death ValleyII: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1742238/
Winter in Death Valley III: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1744963/
Back to Death Valley: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1751444/
Back to Death Valley II: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1752613/0
(Still more from) Death Valley: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1754549
May 08, 2022 at 12:00 PM





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