Great Sand Dunes storm

I camped at Great Sand Dunes NP last night where the weather was pretty rough (woke up with ice on the top of my tent from a windy hail storm). The entire valley was covered with a haze all day long, but it allowed for some dark storm pictures. I woke up early to shoot the first light but had no such luck as there were storm clouds. I also met up with Les in Alamosa to shoot the wildlife preserve. Here's what I ended up with.

Looks similar to the weather we had up this way, but it blew out by mid-afternoon up here. I was contemplating a roadtrip to the dunes, but decided to stick around home this weekend and get the back yard in shape. Got some nice light for sunrise by the Flatirons, but it faded very quickly after that. One of the more interesting weather days that we've had in a while.

Nice images. I love the combo of yellow-green and the blue-blacks of the sky in the first one.

Rick, I think that you made a good choice (and saved alot of gas) by sticking with the Flatirons. Your rainbow pic is awesome. It must feel good to fix up the back yard and get a shot like that all in the same weekend!

Hi Scott,

I like the first picture a lot. Good color and exposure. Plenty of visual interest. The second one would be improved if there was some point of interest (foreground object, etc.). Seems like it was a great weekend for shooting!

Thanks for sharing!

Ken

Your first shot is very good. It certainly captures the stormy mood.

Anything happening at the Alamosa wildlife preserve?

I agree. I like the first picture best. The second picture is pretty lame because it was supposed to be part of a 7 image pano that didn't turn out. Bill, the wildlife preserve has some pretty cool birds (mostly flying) . I don't know much about birds at a distance to tell you what kind. Les took some shots of an owl but I think that was in Monte Vista (20 miles away?). He might be able to give you a better report on the Alamosa scene. The only bird shot that I took was one of a few sparrows on my gutter (see above pic). Thanks for the comments.

I like the sparrow shot! Almost looks like an Audubon print!

Ken

It was great to meet up with Scott yesterday; most of the day was pretty hopeless. Scott pulled the most out of it with his pic up top.

I do have some sad news to report, though... You left too early. This is what sunset looked like from the Alamosa NWR...

For Bill: I spent time at both the Monte Vista and Alamosa NWRs; aside from the normal owl population (the San Luis Valley has to be one of Colorado's premier raptor-watching sites, especially for Great Horned Owls), there were still about 1/2 dozen Cranes still left at Monte Vista. Ducks included Ruddy Duck, Cinnamon Teal, Northern Shoveler, Lesser Scaup, and Redhead, plus the more normal visitors. Lots of Harrier activity, but that's normal for the area, too.

It was really windy while I was cruising around the refuges, so I probably didn't get to see half of what was there. Oh - and a Coyote sang to me while I was taking the above image...

Nice shot Les. Here are the rest of mine from the trip...

http://www.scottborgerphotography.com/GalleryPages/April06Dunes.html

More nice ones from both of you. I also really like that first one in your gallery, Scott. Les...I wasn't able to access your site; the operation kept 'timing out'.

I'm working with Tera-Byte on it; the shared hosting server is "having problems". Hopefully I don't have to reload the whole site, since my "testing" environment is somewhere in the middle of an upgrade to add a functional order page.

Once it's up, I have a first batch of images I'll load on for some preview goodness.

The overcast lighting really adds to the exposure in Scott's Zapata Falls shot. I shot it the next day, only slightly later in the morning than Scott's trip, and had to work around direct lighting at the top of the falls area.

Scott,

Nice moody shot with clouds in the distance. The bright colors in the foreground really make it pop!

Looks like my website isn't coming back for a while... Here's a teaser to keep everyone thinking about GSD.

Sweeeeet, Les!

Ooooohhh! Lovely dune shot!

Ken

Yeay! My server is back up and (mostly) functional, if a bit slow running catch-up.

Here's my first run through... Great Sand Dunes Easter 2006 Gallery

Les,

Really nice work from your trip down there. The "dune lines" shots are awesome. With all of the good work coming from down there I might as well not even bother making a trip!

Michael - don't count yourself out. I had to do some pretty serious level adjustments to get those dunes lines to come out "just right"; I think my camera decided on the "ultra-low" contrast setting (don't know yet - haven't gotten these through Capture, just extracted the JPEG "thumbnails" with dcparseraw and worked with them in PS "as-is"). The lighting was only "pretty good" that afternoon - well, you can get the idea from the scenic shots... - much good lighting awaits those who brave the sands.

I actually tossed a series of double curves taken from the Visitor Center when I verified something I noticed hiking out to the location: someone had climbed the dune just to the right of the one where I shot the "lines" shots and skied down the side of it; although at 400mm + 1.5x "enhancement" I didn't notice while shooting, his footprints and the ski tracks were faithfully captured by my D2X.

Awesome shots Les. I'm going to pretend that I never saw these so that I can deal with leaving to early!

I wouldn't be too concerned, Scott. I'm almost embarrassed to show my Zapata Falls pictures in comparison to yours, and I still like your original posted picture.

You've got a couple of killer abstracts in there, Les. Powerful stuff.