Afton Canyon

[abraxas]

About 15,000 years ago, when the Mojave Desert wasn't a desert, there was a large inland lake now known as Lake Mannix. Somehow, either by an earthquake or torrential rain, the waters of the lake breached the shoreline and poured quickly out to lower ground. This massive flooding tore through the Earth creating Afton Canyon, the 'Grand Canyon' of the Mojave.

This is my effort fooling around trying to save shots taken with my old nikon 990. I found two exposures taken pre-dawn and made an hdr. There was a lot of problems with chromatic abberations(?), so after much screwing with it I came up with this look.

 

[Jeff Canes]

IMO: Very Surreal, Reminds me of some Afga films I have used before or early color films. I am OK with the ground/desert formations but the shy seem a bit off. The whole view maybe a little over saturated for my liking and that could be what is bugging me about the sky.

 

[rjackjames]

another great shot from the master.

 

[abraxas]

Thank you both. I liked the shot right after I did it. The next morning it just looked plain brash and obnoxious. About an hour later it looked pretty good again. The gravel road running up from the bottom right may have been the alignment for a wagon road that ran through the area during the 1850-60s. For that purpose I could use the shot in my project, but I think I might try editing a single exposure version.