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Now we return to the next morning, when the first postings of this series were captured. We got back to the park before dawn (my favorite time of the day) to catch the rising sun against Turkey Peak. My friend is a pro-level landscape photographer, so he brought his full-frame rig with awesome tripod. I was left to hand-hold the Big Cahoona in the pre-dawn darkness.
Amazingly, this shot somehow made it without too much blur. The Big Cahoona stays in "P" mode 99% of the time, but in order to get the shutter to behave in the kind of light we were in I switched it to "S" and notched it up to 1/80th of a second. Still had to clone out some fringing and blur from the inside of the moon, but otherwise this photo is untouched...
These little clumps of moss could be found everywhere amongst the branches and twigs of the drought-stricken, leafless oak trees. Question is, how do you take a picture of them? I settled on making a silhouette against the darkened evening sky...
Walking along the summit of Little Peak I chanced upon this line of grass...the setting sun was just at the right angle to illuminate the blades without shining directly onto the rock. Since the camera was pointed into the sun there was a bit of lens flare, which was cropped out of the upper-right corner of the photo.
Amazingly they had this electric box very near the summit of Little Peak...even has a foundation. As you can see, the box was open, but very little in the way of wiring could be found inside.
Sort of liked these branches and leaves against the blue of the sky...
We decided to climb an adjacent peak, called Little Peak, to get a good bead on the big rock at sunset.
In a place like Enchanted Rock it is a challenge to capture something different, something that hasn't been taken a million times before...all the way back to the day that Ansel Adams himself was there doing landscapes.
So you go with unique landscapeture, multi-shot panoramas and closer-in subjects. This was taken after climbing an adjacent peak, known as Little Rock, with an eye to capturing Enchanted Rock from the west as the sun set.
I'll be taking a break for a week or so due to Thanksgiving, but hope to resume with a few more shots of this trip, then it's back again to the Renaissance Festival with the Big Cahoona.
This one required a little work, as it was almost directly toward the sun, but turned out OK thanks to the black dropper in Levels...
Opportunities increased as the sun began to set while we were on the summit, with the light casting longer shadows...
It was very difficult to get a good shot of the cactus, which was everywhere, due to the fact that it was in such bad shape. Glowing Edges in Elements came to the rescue for this one...
Another one of people, framed by twigs...
Now we return to the next morning, when the first postings of this series were captured. We got back to the park before dawn (my favorite time of the day) to catch the rising sun against Turkey Peak. My friend is a pro-level landscape photographer, so he brought his full-frame rig with awesome tripod. I was left to hand-hold the Big Cahoona in the pre-dawn darkness.
