Winter in Arches – Turret Arch

I was wondering what I am going to post today. It is one of those days, that you have 43466 pictures in the Lightroom library, and nothing just speaks to you. And then I remembered the post I saw yesterday on InterpidXJ’s Adventure Blog with some beautiful black and white shots from the Arches National Park in Utah.

I decided to revisit some of my shots from that area. I have been there three times so far, in February, March and May different years. Only the February trip gave us some snowy shots, in fact we were travelling there through probably the only winter storm that year ;).

I have not created much black and white images from Arches, mostly because I couldn’t get enough of the red color of the Navajo sandstone. But monochrome conversion allows to focus more on the form and texture, and in case of this image- light and shadow. It was really fun to work with individual color controls and then with curve to create this image. I significantly darkened the sky, to make the sun burs more prominent, and to put more accent on the pattern of shadow cast by the grass in the bottom part of the landscape.

Thanks to IntrepidXJ for inspiring me to do something different today.