This is a continuation of hiking and exploration in Valley of Fire State Park and nearby areas, Nevada. All of the photos in this post were shot with an iPhone 14 and converted to monochrome.
This “Dark Shelter” is not in Valley of fire. This is along a 4 wheel drive road outside the park.
More from the Nevada desert later,
Ken
After returning from scouting the north area and having a late lunch, I decided to kill some time, while waiting until time to go out for sunset photos by walking around in the area just across the road, west of the south parking area. Usually, I only went a very short distance into this area to climb a hill to get a cell signal.
This area, as far as I know is not a part of the designated Bisti Wilderness and is probably on Navaho land, but it might also be BLM land.
Just into this area, I spotted this small arch with a view through it into the parking area. The red blob within the arch opening is my Sportsmobile.
This photo is a close up of the arch with the parking lot visible through it.
A really close up shot through the arch in which my red Sportsmobile is visible near the center.
Continuing through the wash behind the arch, I found these small red capped hoodoos in the wash.
A little further down the wash, I found this upside down automobile body on a hill bordering the wash. I wondered how this got here, since there is no road, not even a reasonable way to drive into here to dump a wrecked vehicle. Then I realized that it must have been deposited here by a flash flood.
This view from the opposite side gives a better context for its location.
Hiking through this wash I encountered more automobile parts, which may have come from this vehicle. One such part is in the photo below.
The dark layer in the side of this hill is the geological deposition from which all the dark rock fragments scattered all around Bisti are derived.
I saw the horseshoe like features on this hill side from a distance and they looked like a strange geological feature, so walked closer to investigate. This photo clearly shows that there are exposed portions of the dark rock layer that are weathering. The loose rock fragments are then washed downhill creating this geometric feature.
The red rock layer above is probably the source of all the red rocks scattered all around Bisti. This is the only place that I consciously have observed this rock layer still contained within other layers of rock. I frequently see it as caps over the underlying layers, where the overlying layers have already eroded away.
The geological observations and/or conclusions/conjectures here are my own and not necessarily academically robust.
A hoodoo on the wash wall with a clothes dryer visible in the wash in the lower left of the photo. I’m guessing that this clothes dryer shell also got here via a flash flood.
And a roll away bed frame that probably got here via a flash flood, too. I suppose it is possible that some of these type items might have been intentionally dumped into a wash somewhere, then got moved around via flash flooding.
Walking back towards the parking area, I looked more carefully around the drainage flowing out of Bisti into the area across the road. It is apparent that there are salts or other minerals in the water that drop out along the stream as the water floods over the land, then evaporates. This area is very soft and it is not advisable to walk into it.
The stream creates abstract art like patterns in the mud, some outlined with colorful mineral deposits.
The above mud pattern makes a really nice abstract photo.
This has gotten into a much longer post than I intended. I hope you have not been too bored by it.
Ken
Sand dunes provide great opportunities for abstract photography. I hope that the few such photographs shared in this post will illustrate such possibilities.
Wind creates large expanses of ripples and repeating patterns in sand dunes, such as those shown above. These can be rendered effectively in color, if the light is favorable. I like monochrome for such photos, since one only needs the light to provide shadows and highlights, meaning one can shoot at times other than just the “golden” hours.
By excluding moving objects, one can use focus stacking quite effectively in such images, getting sharp images over a large depth range.
I really like this photo with the diagonal ripples superimposed on the orthogonal wave in the dune. Obviously, the shadows in the troughs, alternating with the highlights on the crests of the ripples, produces these interesting features.
This is another of my favorite abstracts from the sandhills. In this case, I like the highlight in the depression near the top right of the image and the way the ripples flow into and around the depression.
Another image with interesting, bifurcating, ripple patterns with faint wisps of plant matter (look closely to see these) across the ripples.
The animal track across these subdued ripples adds interest to the pattern. The original color version also shows variations in the color of the sand, producing streaks of color crossing the ripples.
I’m sure some of you have seen images of circles swept into sand by plant fronds or limbs. Here is a variation on that with the lower frond producing long streaks across the sand ripples and the upper frond pecking out an intricate, dimpled pattern along the direction of the sand ripples. To me such natural art work is fascinating. These are also short lived, since the next wind will probably erase these or maybe produce a variation. So, if you see an interesting one, photograph it before it is gone!
Ken
