This image, taken from Beatty Road, is from my very first visit to Death Valley. Visiting in the fall of 1995, I recall going to a Houston aeros ice hockey game and scoring some free nights at the Imperial palace, Las Vegas. While that was also my first visit to Vegas, I found the desert more alluring.
That day, clouds had moved in during the overnight hours. As the sun rose the sky was a symphony of color.
Had I been shooting digital back then I probably would have hundreds of images to sort though. But shooting slide film, and with a full day ahead of me, this is the only image I have of this scene.
Though many of the people I have worked with over the years insist I was never an early riser, I enjoy solitary moments in the early morning. Often there's no breeze and, in a setting like this, no traffic noise.
As the sun rises, particularly in a desert environment such as this, I find it's a great time for contemplation. One gets to anticipate the coming day. A fresh start. An opportunity for a do-over.
Beatty Road, also referred to as Beatty Cut-Off, is the most direct route between Beatty and Furnace Creek and is a metaled suitable for any vehicle. On the trip when I took this image I was driving a Ford Thunderbird, rented from Hertz.
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Image Processing
For this image :
- Scanned the original slide with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED
- Used Topaz Denoise AI to address the excessive grain in the original
- Used Topaz Adjust AI to enhance the color
- Used the Lumenzia Photoshop Plugin from Greg Benz to create various luminosity masks to address blue color cast and saturation
- Applied some Tonal Contrast from NIK Color Efex
- Applied some Abstraction and Radiance in Topaz Studio 2
- Blended the above in Adobe Photoshop
Camera
Taken with a Canon EOS5 (A2E) film camera on Fuji Velvia
The lens was most likely my then Canon 28-135.
