Panamint Valley Sunrise – or Maybe It’s Death Valley to You

Sum­mer sun­rise lights up Panamint Val­ley and its moun­tains to the west side. 

Behind the cam­era is the Panamint ridge and behind that is Death Val­ley, and the sun aris­ing.  From my spot the reflec­tive sun­rise presents a momen­tary view wor­thy of a medium for­mat has­sel­blad.  Even big­ger would be bet­ter – but I don’t want to carry any­thing bigger.

This is one of those shots you have to get up early for and stum­ble around in the pied­mont gravel and brush.  You’re try­ing, before sun­rise light passes over, to get back to that place you think you remem­ber from last trip – or maybe it was the trip before that. 

This time you’re car­ry­ing about 30 pounds more equip­ment than before.  How do those big name pho­tog­ra­phers get assis­tants to get up at 3:30 a.m. and carry it all with­out pay­ing them?  Note to self: engage unpaid tote-man.  They call them interns.  Self, get an intern.

Well, I got no intern.  What I got is a cou­ple of hard disks full of scenes like this of the Amer­i­can West.  This week I finally put-up a group of 40 medium for­mat, Cal­i­for­nia land­scape images in Gallery 40  (two pages on this blog).  If I had found this photo file betimes, I would’ve put it in the Gallery and changed the num­ber to 41.  It’s my favorite of the bunch.

View the first 40.