This photo was taken Christmas morning at the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. Numerous movies and TV shows were filmed there. Most recently it’s featured in Subaru commercials where the car is lost among the rock formations. Of course, most of the movies were westerns, and the rock formations bring back my childhood memories of pretending to be a cowboy in the old west. When I look at this scene I can sure imagine “bad guys” hiding behind the rocks. Or, maybe I’m the bad guy using the rocks as my hideout. Either way, it’s easy to imagine yourself inside the image.
This is also a good example of why landscape photographers like sunrise and sunset. Since there weren’t any clouds that morning, the sunrise wasn’t very spectacular. But once the sun was up, its low angle created lots of texture in the landscape, and there’s a great deal of warm/cool color contrast between the shadows and highlights. Where the sun is shining the landscape is turned a bright red-gold color while the shadows take their color from the bright blue sky. The resulting color contrast helps add depth and interest to the scene.
