The Great Dunes
High Prairie CCI** is now under our belt. We survived some hot weather as well as a hefty thunder,lightening, and hail storm that put off an entire cross country division until day three. We has a few minutes of panic wondering how we were going to cover two stadium courses and be back out on the cross country course at the same time. Fortunately the event organizers also had similar conflicts and they arranged start times accordingly. We were able to finish up on cross country and scramble back to the stadium rings with enough time to grab a bite to eat. We were ”card dumping fools” that night back in the hotel. We had to make sure that all files from all three cameras were correctly transferred from memory cards to hard drives and then to another hard drive. A lot of work went into shooting the images and it would be a shame to loose any of them. This even includes carrying the hard drives in and out of restaurants, and another place we may stop as not to let them out of our site. Cristy will be responsible for processing and uploading the entire show once she gets back home. We said good bye to Lynne at DIA ( Denver International Airport) after driving through some more rain and passing by the freaky bronc sculpture on the road to the main terminal. This is a massive blue horse ( bad proportions) with glowing red eyes. We drove south to Farmington NM and stopped a few places to snap some shots along the way. Here are a few favorites.
This was shot through the walkway heading out to the Dunes from the parking lot. I really liked how the trees created a natural frame, giving us a glimpse of what was beyond the tree line.
It has been a while since I experimented with black and white, and I was moved enough by the shapes and compositions to do so with many of my Dune shots. There was some really great driftwood lying about too.
This piece of grass was about 6 inches high and I had to assume my “rolling in the sand “position to get the right perspective on it. I am pretty sure Cristy has added to her ”amy black mail photo archive” as a result.
The Great Dunes were formed by rain and wind that eroded the San Luis Valley and span across 39 square miles and can be as tall as 750 feet. We were fortunate enough to stop in and find water flowing in Medano Creek ( about a foot deep in some places). Looking straight out the Dunes rose above the horizon out of the shallow water. People were hiking up them and little kids had flying saucer sleds and were zipping down them. The sand wasn’t soft like it is back east on Cape Cod, but was rather sharp. I removed my shoes and crossed the water to get some better vantage points and gave my feet a good exfoliation. The water was freezing! Looking to the right were snow capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains. You can read more about the Great Dune here
On the way into the Park it was rainy and the light was VERY flat. We stopped and photographed this tree for a while thinking I could do some post processing magic. The tree had so much character to it, I couldn’t stand to not get a shot of it. We had about a half hr of “magic light” when leaving the dunes so we stopped yet again at this tree and I was able shoot it again.
Don’t forget to check out Cristy’s Version of our adventure to the Dunes!
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