|
This week's photo was taken at the Eureka Dunes, located inside Death Valley
National Park. Getting to the dunes required about 60 miles of
bone-jarring dirt roads, but it was worth it. I had the freedom to roam
the dunes in utter isolation. As a result, the dunes are unspoiled by foot
traffic (until I got there). The dunes were in such pristine condition, I
actually felt guilty walking on them. It was an interesting environment to
shoot in -- you don't have the luxury of walking around to choose your
shot. Shortly after I got this shot, I littered the scene with my
footprints as I trekked on in search of the next shot.
Despite all of my fidgeting with the camera, this shot was actually quite
simple. The camera is in program mode -- completely automatic. I had
a polarizing filter to darken the sky a bit. Probably the hardest thing
about this shot was not falling. It's hard to tell from this shot, but I'm
on a very steep grade that drops about 150 feet. It would be a
double-black on a ski trail. In this shot, I'm sitting on the dune to
avoid loosing my footing while I pause to take the shot.
I did a lot of work to clean this shot up in Photoshop. I stupidly had
my ISO setting at 360 from the previous night's photography. This added a
lot of unnecessary graininess to the shot. I corrected the grain by using
a custom noise action. The action did a pretty good job, but left some
JPEG "artifacts" along the horizon. I used the blur tool to
clean those up.
The shot isn't great, but it does a good job of showing what the dunes are like.
This photo is also available as wallpaper.
|
