Alabama Hills Dawn

The Alabama Hills were named for CSS Alabama. When news of the

Confederate warship's exploits reached prospectors in California

sympathetic to the American Civil War Confederates, they named many

mining claims after the ship, and then the name came to be applied to

the entire range.

The Alabama Hills are a popular filming location for television and

movie productions, especially Westerns set in an archetypical "rugged"

environment. Since the early 1920s, 150 movies and about a dozen

television shows have been filmed here, including Tom Mix films,

Hopalong Cassidy films, The Gene Autry Show, and The Lone Ranger.

Classics such as Gunga Din, Springfield Rifle, "The Violent Men" (1955

film), Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955), the Budd Boetticher/Randolph

Scott "Ranown" westerns, How the West Was Won.

More recent productions such as Tremors and Joshua Tree, were

filmed at "movie ranch" sites known as Movie Flats and Movie Flat

Road. In Gladiator, actor Russell Crowe rides a horse in front of the

Alabamas, with Mount Whitney in the background, for a scene presumably

set in Spain. Star Trek Generations was filmed here in addition to

Overton, Nevada and Paramount Studios. This range was one of the

filming locations for Disney's Dinosaur. More recently, many parts of

the films Iron Man and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were filmed

here.

It’s was early dawn as I set up my camera to take this

photograph. It is an HDR composed of four exposures and it was much

darker than this photograph looks. The Pixel Bender adds that

painterly surreal touch that takes it to a different level.

Thanks for your information about Alabama Hills.  Love your photo in HDR.  Well composed.  Best Regards,

You are a great digital painter Leo, congratulations!

Best regards!

PDE

Well done Leo.  The range of colors and the painterly effect Pixelbender lends makes this an excellent photo.  Thanks for the history too!

Thank you for the kind words.

Pierre you flatter me and I do appreciate it.

Thanks Dominick and your very welcome. Sometimes we forget that a lot of people are unfamiliar with the areas we shoot.

I have very much enjoyed this little series of pixel-bender images from our smoky early morning shoot the Alabama Hills from last summer.  They are each very well done, and bring back fond memories.  The morning shoot was followed up with the less than stellar venison 'hockey-puck' sausages, as I recall.  Ahh, such is life on the road and sketchy diners in little towns.  Cheers!  Chris

Leo..let them call it what they might..Its still fine art!! I would hang this one over my fireplace anytime!

Lefty

 

 

Keep coming back to this shot.  Just dropped it into " my Favorite folio "

Thanks Ray, I think this the best of the Alabama Hills PBs.