The Lonely Lost Mesa

The Lost Mesa is an area of great beauty and mystery.  A blank spot on the map has no paved roads, no signs, no towns, and no campgrounds.  As I like to say, there is no stumbling upon it.  You have to want to get here and you have to know how to find it by taking unmarked rough gravel roads.

If you are lucky enough to get here, you will find over one million acres of grasslands and a few distant lonely mountains.

Visit here and you will have it to yourself.  I have gone days without seeing another person.  Only the occasional rancher who runs cattle on this BLM land.

Here is a view of a few of the lonely mountains that pop out of the open range here.  A few ocotillo still have some leaves from the fall rains.

This is a place that says empty and I hope that this image can capture that feeling.

Salt Flats and Guadalupes

The view of the Guadalupes rising above the salt flats is one of the classic west Texas desert sights. The basin and range geology of the west is at work here.  The western side of the Guadalupes has a dramatic cliff and the peaks themselves rise over 5000' from the salt flats.

I have always liked the two and often try to photograph the two together.  So after photographing just the flats, I turned my attention to putting together an image with both the Guadalupes and the dry lake bed.  

I am really surprised this is not more of a common image.  The view is dramatic and a fairly busy US highway passes right by the salt flats.  I guess most people are in too much of a hurry to get someplace else.  That's ok by me as it leaves most of west Texas to a few photographers.

To try to make it a clutter free of an image I walked far out on the salt flats, but I still found some tire tracks.  Rather than try to find a composition that precluded them-a tough proposition- I just ran with them in the image.  I tried to use them as leading lines the way folks use the rock paths in Death Valley at the Racetrack.  Hope it works.  Salt Flats, tracks, distant mountains in the morning light.

After making images in both color and black and white, I realized the morning was running on and it was time to head to Dell City and a plate of huevos rancheros.  So I packed up and drove west for some good eating.

Salt Flats

One of my favorite parts of the state is the area west of the Guadalupe Mountains.  A lonely, sparsely populated area of sand dunes, salt flats, desert grasslands, and stony mountain ranges.


I had arrived at the Guadalupes on a clear day, I drove west to the salt flats and walked out on them a ways.  I photographed both the mountains and the flats themselves.


 I have always wanted to be able to make a minimalistic image of the salt flats where I could hopefully capture the openness and the sky.


I set up placing northwest looking across the dry lake bed into a clear blue sky.  I tried out compositions that took in both the expanse of sky or that showed the size of the lake bed.


Here is one of the former.  Efke 25 processed in DR-5 as a black and white chrome.

Santa Elena in Black and White

Here is a third posting from my mornings at Santa Elena Canyon.  This is one in monochrome from the overlook.  I finally was able to get my film processed.  This image was done on Efke 25 black and white film that was processed by DR-5 into a black and white chrome.


There is nothing quite like a chrome and a black and white chrome is also something special.  Getting a box of processed images is a bit like being a kid again.


You can compare the color version from the same location from my 5/10 posting.

Santa Elena Canyon and Rio Grande

As the sky remained clear in Big Bend day after day I decided that another morning image to try was to go back to Santa Elena Canyon and photograph from the edge of the Rio Grande.

I made my way down to the river in the dark and walked until I had a decent foreground of water and rocks and not just mud.  The mud was the big concern as I was not keen to be walking back and forth in it.  I found a spot I could bounce across some rocks and hopefully avoid it.

I moved the tripod out into the water and started setting up.

The canyon is so big that the 75mm was the lens to use.  That is as wide as I go and it makes me wish I had the 47XL.

I knew the color would be intense on the rock and decided that classic Velvia50 was the way to go.

I used a soft edge grad filter to tone down the sky a bit and waited.

I set up the camera and worked on focus and then waited.

When the light first hit the top of the wall I got the middle image.  

Then quickly, while I reloaded film the light made its way down the wall and I got the third image.

I added a couple of more images for good measure and bracketed too.  All told I shot 8 sheets that morning.  That was a big day for me.  Luckily I got a couple of nice ones.

If you ever make it to Big Bend be sure to plan for a sunrise from here. You will be glad you did.