Shooting from another point of view, I thought it would make no difference which way one turned at the T, as either way would let one see more of the awesome geology of this area.
Standing in the shadow of the massive rocks behind me, I watched as the early morning sun began to highlight the top of the rock features in front of me.
I wandered back through and over rocks and boulders to the place of my initial shots this morning. I climbed onto a massive rock and made one last image, wrapping up this sunrise shoot.
After shooting from behind these rock features, I began to wander around the area, looking for other photo possibilities, but you will have to come back again to see how that search turned out.
After our morning shoot at the Hot Creek Geothermal Area, we returned to Alabama Hills, with no clue about where to shoot at sunset. So we drove around looking for someplace inspiring our imagination. We failed with the inspiration and finally settled upon the location for the movie Gunga Din, simply because we had no more time to scout around.
There are still a few remnants from the movie set, where a bridge had been constructed over a ravine.
Gear
I don’t know how these gears were used, but there were at least a couple of these embedded in or near the roadway.
Abutments?
There were some concrete items, which I assume were anchors for the bridge, in some of the rocks near the roadway.
I wandered around the area looking for potential sunset shots, finding little inspiration, but I did get a few images that I liked.
For our sunset shoot on March 18, 2024, my son and I hike up a steep hillside near a feature known as The Eye of Alabama Hills. (I only have iPhone images from exploring around the Eye, which might be included in another post later).
It was a cloudy evening, which is both good and bad for photography. Good in having an interesting sky, bad for getting the best golden hour light on landscape features.
As I’ve said many times, early morning landscape photography is the best for a number of reason, but especially for being alone on location. Most casual tourists and visitors to a popular location, seldom get out and about in the early morning hours, so we seldom have to worry about people popping into our shots.
Shooting from the rounded rocks in front of the arch, made using a tripod very difficult for getting down low, so I ended up shooting hand held, using a higher ISO to get my shutter speed high enough to counter my hand shake.
I shot many images at this location today and could include more, but these are representative of the morning’s scene. Having those magnificent, early morning clouds was a bonus for shooting today.
This arch is so named because it is supposed to look like a boot. Maybe the base looks a little like a boot, but I’m not quite seeing this strongly enough to have it so named.
I can partly see the naming of this arch, but I’m thinking another name like “Lobster” or “Crayfish” might be more suitable, especially when other view points are considered.
Upon arriving at the Mobius Arch, we began to work around it checking out various photographic compositions. I suspect every possible view point of this arch has been photographed many times in all sorts of weather conditions, so the prospect of achieving any unique photo here is remote at best.
Note: After migration of my blog site to another hosting provider, there are ongoing problems with the migration. I am finding (hopefully) temporary work arounds, so that I can resume posting, until a permanent fix for the website problems are found.
I began to realize early in this scouting outing that photographing the scenes here would be more challenging than I had anticipated. The scenery was spectacular, but the foreground tended to be so immense and dominant as to become a distraction for letting the eye get past it into the rest of the photo. And those mountains! The Sierra Nevada mountains were domineering as background, seemingly demanding to be included in every shot. As a result, I’m not overly pleased with many of my photos, even those that I choose to present here.
The images in this post have embedded links that will take the reader to that image in my WordPress Image Library. The photo captions are links that will take the reader to that photo on my Flickr page.
Sunset light fades away on the peaks. I’m so grateful for the natural lines and textures in the amazing geology and natural sculpture here, without which the photographs would not be nearly so interesting.
Peak Gold 2
With a cache of fallen rocks in the eroded portion below the peak.
Getting the Shot
I could have yelled at this photographer for intruding into my composition, but I think he adds to the theme of photographing the geology here, as well as giving a human scale for reference.
Regular followers of this blog might recall that in an earlier post about this final sunset shoot I made a statement about thinking that there must be a better composition in the area where I made an early shot before sunset. Well, there was. I came back to that area, as the sun was very low in the sky, where I shot some of the images above. As I moved around the area, I found rocks that made very interesting foreground objects. These last three images are my best (I think) images from that location.
The Cast 1
The rocks of Valley of Fire are the stars of this series, so it seem appropriate to name these last photos for those rocks.
The Cast 2The Cast – Final Bow
Thanks for following this long series of blogs with photos from Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
The natural features in the foreground rocks made great leading lines into the desert background for this image and the muted color of the rocks in the shadows contrasted with the sunset light enhanced color of the background rocks.
Crease Life
I know, this is not a wonderful photo, but as I sat in the shadows on the rock ledge on this image’s right side, I noted (again) how desert life tends to accumulate in the creases between rock units. And the ledge, which is not as wide as it looks near the camera lens, seems to be disappearing into the distance.
Transformation 5
I kept with the “Transformation” theme for a number of photos, shooting from the shadows into the sunset light on the background. In this one, I liked the fracture leading upward toward the cylindrical rock feature, then the rock/skyline edge merging with the shadow line leading down into the sunlit valley.
Transformation 8
For Transformation 8, I was inspired by the foreground rock layer that appears to be flowing downhill.
Complex
The title “Complex” is in honor of the complexity of the geology and rock details throughout this image.
Open Heart
My first inclination was to title this image “Let Sleeping Rocks Lie”, as I think the rock with the sunset light on it looks much like a resting puppy and that rock opening behind the head looks like a floppy ear. Then I noted that that opening was heart shaped. This detail might be more clear, if viewed on a large screen. Clicking on the image will take one to my Flickr page with this image.
Peak Gold
The rocks here have some incredible detail and textures that can best be seen on a large screen, too.
