Alamosa County
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As a child who grew up in the lush Sahyadri Mountains of India, I believed that deserts looked like the sand dunes that I saw on tv. So, it was a bit jarring to learn that sand dunes exist in relatively green states like Colorado and Michigan. While I haven't yet visited Michigan's famous sand dunes, I took the chance to visit the great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve of Colorado. Unfortunately, it had to be a quick visit as we were rapidly falling behind schedule.
Still, we got to visit an absolute stunning piece of landscape with perfect golden light from the setting sun. While I have been to the mesquite dunes of the Death Valley National Park before, GSDNP was something else. The Size of the dunes was truly staggering, wind an ever-present element at most dunes was also making its presence felt. I was trying to create images that captured these three elements that was on display that day, the play of golden light on the folds of the dunes, the effect of the wind on the dunes, and the size of the mighty dunes making the few climbers by the horizon looks like ants. It was difficult to get all these into a frame and I am not sure if I did a convincing enough job creating picture but this view was one of my favorites from our visit to this wonderful part of the world.
I was talking about this place with someone from work who used to live nearby. I visited here in May, 2013 during an amazing 10,000 mile road trip...
My second evening in Great Sand Dunes National Park played out much better despite the wind not backing down. I left a couple hours before sunset to...
Sand catches the last rays of sunlight in front of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Great Sand Dunes National Park, giving the normally beige sands...
A recent trip through Colorado with Kevin Benedict yielded a lot of interesting photos that I am just starting to process. We started in Great Sand...
- Heraclitus.
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When we planned our trip to Colorado, one of the places I absolutely wanted to see was the great Sand Dunes national park. The existence of sand dunes in the middle of such a mountainous state really piques my curiosity. So we sacrificed a couple of nice fall photo ops and decided to do a detour to include the great Sand Dunes and Black canyon of the Gunnison National Parks. It still left us with about 8 hours of back and forth driving away from our original plan to get to this stunning location.
This was one of the first shots I took as we were nearing the park from the access road. I saw this amazing cloud formation above the dunes and the massive Sangre de Cristo Range that rises right behind the stunning dunes. Even though this little side excursion kind of wiped us out, I am so glad we did it and can’t wait to come back.
- e. e. cummings.
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While on our road trip through Colorado, we decided to stretch ourselves a bit and visit the stunning Great Sand Dunes National Park. We could only spare an afternoon for this beautiful piece of the desert but wanted to scope it out in case of a future visit. En route to the park, we came across the signs to the San Luis State Wildlife Area. Since we had ample time left for sunset, we decided to do a quick stop and see if there are any interesting birds around. We struck out in terms of Birds but got to see the lake in its full capacity, which is unusual for this time of the year.
While we were walking around the park, I noticed an unusual cloud formation on top of the lake. Looked like a lenticular cloud formation, but those usually form on top of mountain peaks, so I am not sure about the name of these types of clouds. We looked around for a suitable element to place as the main subject and finally found this tuft of long grass growing in the lake. I used a Lee Big Stopper to slow down the shutter speed a bit. Unfortunately, the filter rendered this image with a very strong blue color cast. No amount of post-processing could save the image, so I wrote it off as a lesson learned. Recently while I was on baby duty, I thought it would be fun to go through images that I could give the black and white treatment, and the result impressed me enough to post here. This also emphasizes the importance of going through your old shots; not only does it help to learn from the mistakes that you made but the practice also helps unearth forgotten gems.
Sunlight kisses the edges of a sand dune edge in the late afternoon. While photography is often described as "chasing the light," I sometimes find...
One of my favorite photographers is Edward Weston. He had a wonderful ability to show us grace in nature. It could be a bell pepper or a massive...
sand microtopography, Great Sand Dunes National Park
The Great Sand Dunes occur in a natural corner, or rincon, of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range in south central Colorado. Sediment eroded from...
As I mentioned in my previous post, the first planned stop on my road trip home was Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. My original...
- Pierre Bonnard.
Our trip to the beautiful Great Sand Dunes National Park was not pre-planned; instead a stopover during our fall road trip through Colorado’s beautiful mountain landscapes. It was quite a change in scenery as we drove from Salida to the National Park as grasslands gave way to the desert. We reached the Park barely before the golden hour started and learned a lesson that an hour is not enough to find good shooting spots at a National park which is essentially a punishing dune.
It took us a solid hour to climb the first dune in our path, and the high dune was still very far away. In all the panic and urgency to find a decent spot, I noticed that the sunset was painting the mountains to the southeast in fabulous colors. I did not want to return empty-handed from such a fantastic location and decided to make lemonade with the situation that I was in. The light was glorious and naturally beautiful, but my contribution mainly being at the wrong place at the right time.
Here's another shot from Great Sand Dunes National Park. Seeing this view was well worth the effort of getting up here to High Dune. However, once...
The last light of the day gives a warm glow to the dunes below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Great Sand Dunes are the result of river/ stream...
Wind is a magician and artist in the dunes. Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
Ripples of sand splay across a dune, their forms accentuated by the low afternoon sun. The fascinating patterns are the result of interaction...
The Great Sand Dunes occur in a natural corner, or rincon, of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range in south central Colorado. Sediment eroded from...
Thanks to all Phoide contributors to Alamosa County!
Most notably Sandeep Thomas.