Well it’s been a busy past two weeks – and something had to give – so my blogging went by the wayside. We left on Feb 5th for Death Valley to run our instructional photo tour. The week was without clouds, ironic since the first image I uploaded to Facebook was a beautiful night with great clouds and color! We worked the various popular locations of Mesquite Flat Dunes, Badwater (which was flooded), Devil’s Golf Course, Zabriskie, and the racetrack, and everyone made solidly good pictures.
In situations without clouds, I tend to go in closer – frame tighter – to eliminate the sky or at least minimize it. I use the sky at predawn and post sunset to get some subtle colors out of the scene. I look a lot more closely at the details nearby. The examples here are because of that narrowing down of my ‘framing’, and working with the soft hues of dawn or dusk. My signature style is the intimate landscape, and there was much there for us to work with this past week. The soft pinks of the rounded pattern of hard pan was my final image of the week – and we had glorious pink clouds over the mountains to the west, but not over us! Yet it provided a nice pink glow to ‘color’ the whitish hard pan and gave some directional light to bring out the textures. There are a few non-nature pictures included, too – we explored the grounds of the Inn and the museum area at Furnace Creek.
There are more images to work on, panoramas to stitch, HDR’s to assemble, etc., but those will have to wait as I prepare to leave for Mexico on Friday morning.
Thanks, Lin. I love textures, too, but you probably could tell that here! lol.
Textures everywhere. I love textures. Thanks so much for sharing these awesome shots.
Brenda, your photos are awesome as usual, and very inspiring. Thank you for posting them.
I regret for not stopping to the Death Valley during my family trip from Las Vegas to San Diego. It is definitely a place where I Must go!!
Oh, yes, Simone, the next time you are in that area you must visit the place!
Thanks Iza. I know it’s easier to see them all large but it would have made for a HUGE post! The reflection picture was special for me to make – I love showing the effects of light and scenes reflected in water. Thank you for your comments.
I love the reflection of the mpuntains (second raw, image on the left). For a minute I was wondering why this photo is upside down, until I noticed the stone or the plant, I cannot see well on small thumbnail, in the right bottom corner. Great image!
Brenda–these are wonderful images–Death Valley is one of my favorite places–so diverse
Thank you Beverly – it is a favorite place of mine, too. We had fun this past week!