Brilliant yellow-orange light seems almost to radiate from the lower leading line of a cloud front pouring over the east edge of the Sierra Nevada--in the Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine, California.
I've never before seen light quite like this in a setting like this. Somehow in some way I can't well put to words there was a feeling in the atmosphere, perhaps something we could call magical realism (if I may borrow a literary term). Even the perception of light angles seemed somehow off.
Several of the northeast mountain slopes shone in golden hues as if lit from the radiating cloud front rather than from the angle of the distant setting sun. A soft breeze gained strength, but not too much, and some sort of midsize animal darted among these jumbled boulders, visible from time to time only as streak of fur in one or another of the small interstitial spaces between the great stones. Colors of winter and some of spring found the sage and grasses, and even the rocks and stones themselves. It was a truly memorable evening in the Eastern Sierra.
Thanks for viewing.
Tags: Alabama Hills 395 Lone Pine California Nikon Nikkor Landscape Mount Whitney photobenedict Lone Pine Peak Mt. Whitney Sierra Nevada Tuttle Creek Sunset Range of Light Rocks Rocky Boulders Crags Clouds Peaks Ridges Hills Slopes Boulder Cloudy Wisps Magical Orange Yellow Mood High Sierra Evening Inyo National Forest Eastern Sierra Light Sierra Crest
© All Rights Reserved
Thickening, almost brooding clouds, perhaps working toward becoming a storm, form over vast icefields just beyond the visible peaks and begin to fill the skies over Bow Lake, in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.
Ever since I was a kid, I've been a little fascinated with how the onrushing sweep of shadows before an approaching cloud front affects our human moods. When with a group that moments earlier was chatting away or playing cheerily, the effect often is palpable as almost everyone quickly displays heightened alertness--in this day and age mostly just to try to determine if it's about to storm severely, but still there's something in peoples' looks that has a hint of evolutionary vestige from more fearful times.
I exposed this shot so as to accentuate the mood I was feeling as the clouds began to overtake the sun here, and judging my own shots as I do on whether they take me back to the feeling I had when I was there, this one works for me.
Thanks for viewing!
© All Rights Reserved
A gorgeous spring sunrise silhouettes scattered cypresses like Rorschach blots among the tranquil waters of Caddo Lake, near the amusingly named hamlet of Uncertain, Texas.
The greater Caddo Lake area is reputed to be largest cypress forest in the world, and there aren't many better ways to spend the pre-dawn twilight than weaving through the maze of narrow channels overhung with moss-draped branches before breaking into a more open area like this one to meet the first warm light of day.
Thanks for viewing.
Tags: Caddo Lake Bayou Uncertain Texas Louisiana Sunrise Morning Dawn Nikon Landscape photobenedict Beautiful Big Cypress Bayou Cypress Tree Forest Trees Spring Green Warm Light Rays Shadows Spanish Moss Moss Boat Boating Handheld Reflection Reflections Slough River Canal Pond Southern Swamp
© All Rights Reserved
Life may be a tangle of turmoils and triumphs, and no doubt that is true on the ground here in the Palouse as everywhere. But viewed from on high along the flanks of Steptoe Butte, all seems beauty and peace in this rolling landscape of green spring fields at sunset.
It's been a while again since I've last posted, and it's been almost as long since I've been out with my camera, but I've been sifting through old files again, and this one from several years back caught my eye and recalled some great times wandering around the inland Northwest. I simply love these types of landforms, whether the golden forms of sand dunes at sunrise or these undulating verdant hills--the wonderful coexistence of realism and abstraction.
Thanks for viewing!
© All Rights Reserved
We spent the pre-dawn this Utah morning wandering along the edge of the always compelling and ever-crumbling cliffs known as the Skyline Rim or Moonscape Overlook, so known because the blue-gray badlands flooding the valley several hundred feet below appear as one imagines the moon's surface itself might look to a fortunate astronaut from such a vantage point. The lunar illusion was broken that morning, however, by a pleasing array of thin streaks of clouds, but those same clouds gave us hope that we'd see a colorful sunrise from our eastward-facing clifftop perches. And, in fact, it was a nice sunrise over the moonscape, enough so that I didn't even think to look around much for several minutes until the sound of footfalls crunching in the gravel behind me caused me to glance back over my shoulder toward Caineville Mesa and Factory Butte prominently visible a few wide miles across the desert plateau to our west.
What I saw at that glance was, as you see, quite an attractive happenstance of alpenglow, distant haze, and a crown of cloud wisps, all brightened in ephemeral shades of pink. And there too was the moon itself, nearly set. I whirled around and jammed on the long lens, stopping down as I often do to extend the exposure some, and opened the shutter. I got this shot and two similar others in about a minute's time before the color faded, and I'm glad I did.
Thanks for viewing.
Tags: Factory Butte Moonscape Overlook Caineville Mesa Hanksville Utah Mancos Shale Badlands Nikon Landscape Caineville Capitol Reef National Park Sunrise Dawn Moon Moonset Morning Blue Hills Blue Valley Skyline View Skyline Rim Blue Gray Mesa Escarpment Cliff photobenedict Light Storm Stark Barren Desert Clouds Ledge Canyon Valley Spring Mountains San Rafael Swell Upper Blue Hills Moonscape
© All Rights Reserved