Today was both a great day and one fraught with frustrations. My Lightroom has gone south, and we are in a part of the world where the Internet is slow. After all, we are in Death Valley!
With no cell service here, there is no help at hand. I’ve done all the usual things, but I shall just have to live with the current state of Lightroom until we return home. Meanwhile, there are a few tools I can still use in Lightroom. Don’t you love computers?
One cannot come to Death Valley and not visit Death Valley itself, a fault between two mountain ranges that is widening as part of the ongoing changing Earth. The salt flats there are classic.
Constant expansion buckles the salt, creating ridges that make wonderful patterns. We walked out three-quarters of a mile or so to get beyond where most people go. No more carvings in the salt. No more salt grafitti.
Just us and our cameras and tripods.
Today I used all my lenses. The dust storm was over, and while one needs to be careful, there was not the danger of unwanted elements attacking the sensor as was the case the past two days.
It was fun finding just the right combination of ridges and flats, back drop, clouds.
I wanted to give a feeling of the distance to the far mountains about five miles away. Remember, objects on land are farther away than they appear.
On our way out, we stopped at the bad water, the salty water than a mule many decades ago would not drink. His owner marked the area as “Bad water,” and the name stuck.
Still, it provided some great reflections. That, in combination with the salt and different colors, made a great subject for photographing We all enjoyed working the scene, each in his or her own way.
The salt reminded us all of snow. We had done some similar photography in Yosemite last year where the white set off the colors in the reflections.
We were all pleased, but it was time to move on. Breakfast beckoned. We had a really early start, and our stomachs were growling. Besides, we wanted to get back before breakfast was no longer served!
After returning to Stovepipe Wells to take care of e-mails and downloading images, we took off again for a canyon in another part of the park.
The park ranger told me that the road was in the best condition he had ever seen it, so we knew — or at least hoped — that we would be fine in our not-so-high-clearance rental.
The road really was fine, although we took it slow. It was clear that it had recently been graded, and while most of it was fairly smooth, there were the errant, sharp rocks, and we didn’t want to get a flat tire. Come to think of it, did anyone check to make sure we had a spare? Oh well, too late now!
There were craggy outlines, subtle colors of mountains in the distance, but we decided this was a morning shoot, not an afternoon one.
We climbed up more steeply, easing around switch backs, being careful to not scrape the side of the car against steep, rocky banks in places.
At the top of the pass, we were greeted by some great color.
Tomorrow is another early day, so bed beckons!
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