No Better Way to Bookend a Trip Then to Visit the Peaks and Mountains of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area - stock photo

No Better Way to Bookend a Trip Then to Visit the Peaks and Mountains of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. At a parking area pullout to the Middle Oak Creek Trailhead with a view looking to the northwest to across the Mojave Desert landscape leading up to the sandstone formations and peaks. My thought on composing this image was to take advantage of some higher ground that I was located on and capture a sweeping view, looking down and then across to those peaks and ridges. I felt that bringing them a little higher into the image would bring out a sense of grandeur and minimize any flattening from the wider angle view. Given I was looking almost in the direction of the sun, I wanted to later be able to pull out some of the details present in the colored layers of rock on the mountainsides. I used the ClearView Plus tool in DxO PhotoLab 6 to help with that. The story behind going to this location on a trip to Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks was a Ripleys Believe It or Not comic that mentioned this location. I then went on Flickr and found quite a few amazing images and decided that I had to visit this place, at least for a short time, before heading back to Las Vegas for my flight to Austin. This is definitely a place to spend more time hiking and exploring on a future trip!