Zabriskie Point

@aggie: If I remember the story correctly, a group of early California settlers took a short-cut across Death Valley. Only a few survived the journey. When they made it to the other side they looked back and named it Death Valley because of all those that died in the heat.

@Ken McCoy: Hi Ken! Thanks for the complement! Starting off with beautiful landscape certainly helps. I find I do my best work when I'm inspired! For this shot, I traveled by car to get here and walked about 500 yards to the top of this look out platform. Then I hopped a wall and hiked out to a better location. I arrived on the scene about 30 minutes before dawn. I almost always use the slowest "film speed" available and always use a tripod. I meter my subject with a "gray card". I also really love the Carl Zeiss lens on my little Sony H-5. I believe all these thing contribute to the results I'm getting.

On the processing side, I adjust the levels. I use two or three different adjustment layers for the conversion: the channel mixer, the hue/saturation, and gradient map. finally, I burn and dodge as needed. I hope this helps!