March 15, 2012
Elliptical Rings in Valley Of Fire State Park, Nevada

I returned to the easily-accessible area of Valley Of Fire State Park yesterday afternoon to take advantage of the clouds. I had found this interesting set of maroon elliptical rings in the yellow sandstone on my first exploration of the area, and yesterday the clouds cooperated so I could photograph it. That's an advantage of being familiar with an area — you know where to go to take advantage of the shooting conditions. The foreground was already in the shade because the sun had set behind a ridge, so I made two exposures to balance the brightness between the bright sky and dark land, and then I combined them by hand in Photoshop.