Bisti Wilderness, May 2019, Day 6 Sunrise

I hiked to The Seal to shoot pre-sunrise and sunrise shots at this large well known hoodoo in the northern portion of Bisti on the morning of my 6th day here in late May of 2019.  The sunrise light was not great, but it was still good.

I made a few exposures from below The Seal in the pre-sunrise light.  Then climbed further up the hillside to shoot from just below the hoodoos and from a location that gave me a view from just above The Seal and other adjacent features.  The pre-sunrise, dim light required long exposures.

This iPhone shot shows the DSLR shooting location, overlooking The Seal and adjacent rock features and the westerly view with the first sunrise rays highlighting the features on the horizon:

One of the long exposure pre-sunrise shots with the DSLR:

I think most photographers shoot The Seal from below, since that is the view that lets one see the seal shape of the hoodoo cap.  I’m sure others have walked around, viewing these in the same manner as shown above, but I do not recall having seen any photos from this viewpoint.  I’m hoping that I captured images here that are less common, if not unique.

When the sun rose over the horizon, I began to see the highlights on my primary subjects.

I then moved back down the slope to shoot The Seal from below in the early morning sunlight.

Finishing my shoot at The Seal, I went back down into the wash and proceeded to another nearby location that I had previously scouted.

As is my normal practice, I continued to wander around after the golden hour, looking for other interesting features to shoot before the sun got too high in the sky.  I climbed up out of the deep wash onto the high plateau in the area where I had shot on other occasions and found these two curious looking rocks and their shadows:

The low angle sun cast interesting shadows from a number of small hoodoos.

The brighter sunlight and long shadows are good for obtaining monochrome images.

Little hoodoo that appears to be looking up to a bigger one:

An array of short hoodoos with flat, elongated rock caps in monochrome:

These elongated, flat rocks are remnants of an originally continuous rock layer. Weathering and erosion has created these individual rock sections.  In time these will disappear entirely.

A monochrome with selective colorization (bringing out some of the original color in a monochrome image):

I think the black and white version, which can be found on my Flickr page,  of the above image is more appealing than the selectively colorized version.

That’s it for now,

Ken