The Unconformity
Rainbow Basin National Natural Landmark, located a few miles northwest of Barstow, Ca., is known in geo-lingo as an “unconformity.” That’s all I know about it, and since I usually forget all the technical junk that I read about how the landscape bashed and battered itself along the fault lines that meet, pass nearby, under and around this beautiful place, I’ll just agree; It does not, geologically conform to the general landscape of the area.
Now for the cool stuff. This place is awesome for photography!
A week or so ago, I took off for the basin to get some sunset shots. The sky was hazy and somewhat cloudless. I arrived about two hours before sunset giving me the opportunity to explore a few of the trails and get used to the lay of the land- This tilted, twirled and twisted land.
This shot was taken as the sun sank behind a ridge to the left a few minutes before the sunset beyond the true horizon. I like the way the streak of light in the foreground lines up with the strata on the hill further back. I think this geologic feature is called an “Hogback.” The thing I don’t care for about this photo, is that it seems to have too much midtone. This is a multiple exposure HDR (high dynamic range) shot merged from .jpg format. I backed up all my shots with camera RAW images. Supposedly, I hope, there’s more information stored in RAW so I can edit up a better version with tonal quality more to my liking.