Colorado River Needles

[abraxas]

Sunset, Topock Az.

C&C welcome;

 

[ccd333]

This is very, very nice! Has a painting like quality to it.

 

[chris82]

beautiful,is it HDR?

 

[midget patrol]

Beautiful.

Why is the water purple?

 

[Scooter]

My first thougth too was it looks a lot like a painting - cool. Would make a great postcard, puzzle, etc.

 

[lostprophet]

if Heaven was on Earth I think it would look like that

 

[abraxas]

It's an HDR, but the photos used were part of a time lapse (of sorts, me counting 'about' 60 seconds between shots) showing the 'Needles' through a sunset.

I was frantically looking for material to try HDR on and came across this series. Rather than each exposure varying, I was wondering what the cumulative effect would be as the light changed.

For the most part, the water was a tuquoise color. There are several shots that the water went to purple highlights. I liked these better and ran with them as I thought the turquoise looked too even and flat.

Historical note; These peaks were called the Aha Macav (meaning, by the water) by the Pipa Aha Macava (People by the water- Mojave Indians), who lived in the valley upstream (behind where I was standing) before white man came to the area. White man translated Aha Macava to Mojave (Mo-Ha-Vee). So basically, these formations are what the Mojave Desert was named after. Archaic and irrelavant information, but I don't get many opportunities to drop that tidbit.

 

[JTHphoto]

nice, the hdr had kind of a surreal effect on this one... love the light you were able to capture on the "needles"... :thumbup:

 

[mentos_007]

Abraxas, this is a beautiful photo. but when I opened this thread, I thought that you played with it a bit too much in PS because of water. Actually, I dunno if I like the purple colour of water but I like the oranges in the sky and greens in the land.

 

[abraxas]

Thanks everyone for the comments. I've been looking at some shots I took a year before and the water has purple highlights in there too.

This one was taken from a point lower and about 200 yards closer with a wider angle. The highlights in the water look the same. The difference in the color of the sky is due to assembling the sequence of sunset photos and the color accumulated. The actual color of the mountains is purple. The weird-bizarre looking highlights on the water is natural.

for convenience;

 

[abraxas]

Just to give it a final bump to see if there are any comments on the last two photos I added.

 

[ShootHoops]

This is amazing! Great job.