I can’t believe it has been almost exactly 26 years since I was in Death Valley National Park. I was going back through some (very old) images, relatively low quality scans of 5×7 color prints, and found this image of some sand dunes shot in June of 1990. I was out there on a three week trip with a couple of great friends from high school. And Death Valley was only one of the many stops we made. We drove from Texas to New Mexico to Colorado to Utah to Nevada to California to Arizona and back home, hitting just about every state and national park on our way.
Of course, we were shooting film in those days. And sadly, it was on this trip that I discovered that professional quality bulk film – we were rolling our own 😉 – is very sensitive to heat. Sigh. 25+ rolls of 36 exposure film heat damaged. Oh well, I guess that means I have to go back and recreate the whole trip. Anybody with me?
Since this print scan was pretty washed out, I decided to process it with a hand drawn pencil / charcoal look using a combination of several blended textures and about 5 hand-blended passes through Topaz Impression. I like the way it came out, but man do I wish I could get a do-over on shooting this image!
Day 252 of my 365 photo a day project.
If you are looking for art for your home or office or something to spice up your digital desktop, this image and most of the others from this project are available as prints and digital downloads. You can also check out the rest of my portfolio here.
