MAYBE IT'S NOT ABOUT THE BIRD - 20 April 2014

Eastern New Mexico Sunrise - Milnesand, NM (File #1413016)

The full resolution file is located here: http://www.tom-hill.biz/Galleries/Scenics/New-Mexico/i-BDk4bXF/A
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This weekend usually is the Prairie Chicken Festival in Milnesand New Mexico. Like last year, there weren't enough birds to allow the festival to take place. In fact, it's so bad this year I didn't even try to take a Lesser Prairie Chicken picture. All I did was count chickens from a discrete distance and shoot anything else like this image.

It just happened as I was leaving the Bunkhouse, the sunrise was just beginning to color the eastern sky. I noticed it just as I got in the car. I drove all of ten feet, saw the image, stopped the car, then jumped out--super short drive.

What's interesting is the colors. Right at sunrise, there are intense blues as the night gives way to the sun. Then, there's the coming sun color as you see here. The hard part is bringing all this together without over emphasizing any one element or another.

The clouds look blurry because this image was a made from two 20 sec exposures using my Nikon D800 and my 24mm Tilt-Shift lens. This lens was used to make the pano--merging two files shot to the left and right.

Oh, this was also the most sun we saw all day. There was a good amount of rain mid-afternoon but not nearly enough to break the drought that seems to be affecting the birds.

Cheers

Tom