"Grand Dunes"

Grand Dunes... Indeed! And grand mountains, grand colors and grand scene. Beautiful capture with all the competing but sympathetic shapes. Wonderful light! Mike

 

The Great Sand Dunes of south central Colorado are considered the highest in the nation. At

over 700 feet above the surrounding valley, their imensity can only be dwarfed by a mountain

range of 14,000 foot peaks. The Sangre de Christo mountains loom large above the dunes

and are the sole reason the dunes exist. Grains of sand are carried across the San Luis Valley

by easterly winds. Upon encountering the mountains, the sand is deposited at the base of

this majestic range. Thanks for all observations and enjoy the Larger view!!

While this deserves all of the platitudes that it will receive for all of the obvious reasons, i.e., color, light quality, and composition, etc.; what really makes it a stand-out for me is the fantastic details in this; particularly in the FG, middle, and on the mountains. I love that sort of smooth area starting in lower right and leading the eye to the dunes, and then on into the mountains, and up into the clouds. Nothing dominates here; all of the elements work very harmoniously together. Most of us, I assume, would have made the dunes the primary element. With this image, Mark; you have given us a much broader view of the landscape in its entirety, and placed it in its environmental context. Well done! Cheers! Chris

Really beautiful!!!

Great light in this image. I'd probably crop out the bottom flat area.

Thank you for all taking a moment. While my heart raced and I fumbled with my camera and tripod to get off a few shots, I did manage to pull the scene in and capture the dunes above the flat. I actually prefer this compo with the flat area because, to me, it provides the dunes with some scale. The other version is in my portfolio and changes the perspective dramatically. Thank you for the feedback Laurent.

Very dramatic Mark. And you know how much I love drama!:)

Very good capture, as I'm sure you were rushing to capture this very brief splendor of color.

Absolutely beautiful. This is the shot of the dunes that I have been wanting to get for myself. Very much: Congratulations. I now have a new standard to compare against for this area. Thanks for posting this for us to see.

Mark, great to see s Colorado scene and this one is definitely one of your best. Excellent drama!! Beautiful clouds and light captured, larger version really takes us there with all the details. can you share your exposure details..?is this one exposure? what a great image.. 7/7 .... regards, Rajeev.

Thanks Brian, Richard and Rajeev. I remember watching the clouds rolling and I was concerned that the skies would open up before I got to the dunes. Luckily, this stormy sunrise was breaking up and I was able to climb the dunes and take many more photos. This is one exposure, however, I made two scans from the slide, one for the brightest areas and another for the dunes. Then they were combined in PS. I am guessing this exposure to be about 1/2 second at f16, I don't remeber if it was 25 ASA or 64 ASA Kodachrome. Because this was one exposure, compensations were made for the sky area without blowing the highlights. If at this time we were using Grad filters, the sky would have been rendered much more intense and saturated, therefore I needed the darker scan to pull the sky.

That sky is breathtaking! A spectacular image, absolutly beautiful.

 

 

superb...7-7

Perfect in all aspect, an extraordinarily beautiful image with great color combination.

Thanks Linda, Razaq and Beng J. Very kind observations and I appreciate them.

Wow... A painting !

Very nice, I bet the prints are great.  Film what a concept.  Perfect color and tone, love it.