After the storm...

[Dennis Ernst]

Southern Arizona is known for it's warm dry winters but this year has been a little wetter than usual. Earlier this week we had a two day rain that brought and amazing 2 inches or more or rain. Normal rainfall would be about a half inch for the entire month, so this was something unusual. To my surprise there was actually water flowing in the normally dry Santa Cruz river channel and was the first time I've ever seen a surface flow there. Numerous golf courses and a huge pecan orchard (I've heard is over 15,000 acres) use most of the surface flow year round.

Normally, Arizona skies are an endless dark blue and often sunset are a bit disappointing as there is nothing for the light to reflect off of. Last night was different. Heavy clouds hung low over the San Rita Mountains and only later in the afternoon began to break up and reveal the snow covered mountains. Mt Wrightson, the highest peak in the San Rita's is about 9,500 feet, and I'm guessing the snow line was more about 6,000 feet. Makes you re-think warm and sunny, doesn't it.

I was hoping to catch some great sunset shots if the clouds would break up but to my disappointment, the sun dropped into a band of clouds on the western horizon. I was about to pack it up and go in when the real show began to develop. Colorful bending light rays began to color the clouds and reflect off the higher elevations of the San Rita's to the east. The above shots are a few of the 20-30 minute spectacular that make Arizona famous.

Enjoy!

Dennis Ernst

 

[Brian Moore]

Very nice images, Dennis. I especially like #3, the way the stream and the light emanate from the right of the frame--or flow toword the right of the frame, depending on your point of view. 1 and 2 are interesting because the foreground grasses are so apparently colorless compared with the background. There is almost an HDR look to them.

What equipment did you use to capture the images?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Lovely shots Dennis - so often the best images are taken with either gap lighting (between the clouds or clouds and the horizon) - or reflected lighting from the clouds after the sun has set.

#2 and #3 are stunning

We had the rain in CA on Monday-Tuesday, quite the winter storm!

 

[adrian jordin]

I like the pastel tones in #1 and #2, but #3 has to be my favourite..
Wonderful pictures.

 

[Kev Pugh]

I like all of these but if I had to choose just one then it would have to be #3 Fantastic colours in them nice work Dennis

 

[Allan Batchelor]

I really like 2nd one out of theses. All good tho

 

[Ralph Thornton]

Nice captures. My fav would be #2. I might crop out a little of the grass at the bottom though.

 

[Dennis Ernst]

I used a Canon 350 with a 28-135 lens. I shoot raw so processed the raw file with Lightroom.

Lightroom has some nice tool to help balance the extreme light and dark areas. As the foreground was in the shadows it didn't benefit from the wonderful light in the the upper portions of the photo. I shot a whole series from a little knoll across the street from my house and it was interesting to see the band of light coming from between the clouds crawl up the mountains. At no time was everything lit well, so it was picking images that had good colors and were interesting.