An Alvord morning....

I shot this from the edge of the Alvord Desert yesterday morning. I say "from the edge" because after a 8 hr drive to what we thought would be a "desert" ended up being a lake! Apparently a ton of rain and snow melt this year has kept it a lake, for now. I went with Zach and had an awesome time, some of the best fun shooting I've had yet. Thanks to Mark for the inspiration to do the trip, it's a real special place.

Beautiful scenery and great color pallete. When it's a desert, you won't get colors on the ground like that....

This turned out really well, I love the grasses receding to the mountains.

Great light and color. The top 1/2 of the mtn range is noticeably darker than the lower 1/2...is this natural, due to the angle of light, or did you use a hard grad here?

I'm sorry I forgot to say what I did. I did use a 3 stop grad, I dodged it a bit, but I guess I didn't quite get it light enough in the right spots....oopps!

I do believe I told Zack to call the BLM in Burns, which would have confirmed it was a lake not a desert right now, before you left. I figured conditions would be similar to what you saw. When I stopped by in both March and April the water was much higher still and the area shown in all of your images I've seen so far would have been underwater. I've been coming out routinely for over ten years now and have never seen so much water out there. Not so much from rain, but snowmelt and a great snowpack in the Steens. I've seen the playa totally dry in April as recently as last year! I'm glad you both got some keepers despite the unusual conditions.

Nice to see someon can tear him/herself away from the waterfalls and make for the east side.....though I'd have lots of trouble driving by the National Grassland and the Badlands and Pine Mountain.....and I guess Malheur NWR too.....

Lens?