### Saturday May 01, 2010 at 20:51

# It was chilly in New Mexico

Sand, Snow, Sky (click image for larger view)

Courtesy of the Icelandic volcano, our friend Jim from the UK ended up staying for an extra week. Thinking what best to do with the additional time, we decided a brief trip back down to Santa Fe was the thing to do.

Santa Fe has great food and interesting architecture, and the prices for accommodation at this time of year were fantastic! I hadn’t expected to wake up to snow there last Friday morning however. Not too surprising I suppose, given that Santa Fe lies at 7,000 ft.

On the way back north we stopped for one night at the Great Sand Dunes National Park. They had received 18” of snow the previous night and much of it was still left. We headed out for dawn the next morning.

Sunrise was blocked by clouds, but there were still some interesting shots to be found. The image above shows the snow blending into the wind-blown dunes. The patterns and gradients contrast well with the clearing skies above, I think.

The image was converted using Nik Silver Efex Pro, which does a wonderful job at this sort of thing. I pulled the brightness down a little, increased contrast and structure before applying a red filter to darken the skies and then going further and reducing the blue sensitivity to add a touch more drama. A small amount of grain emphasized the textures found in the lower half of the shot.

Medano Creek was flowing with a wonderful mix of ice shelves and frost all being gradually eroded away by the continuous surge waves that make this such a unique place to visit.

Posted in Locations

Stephen · Saturday, May 01, 2010, 20:51 · Permalink

## 1 comments on this post

1

21:52 1 May 2010

Jao van de Lagemaat said:

The sanddunes is one of my favorite places in Colorado. Your shot is very nice. It is almost impossible to tell where the sky ends and where sand begins.

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