Photographing during the first day of our trips to Big Bend National Park is a bit of a challenge due to the long drive from Austin. We usually pick a spot near the lodging location so we can spend some time recuperating from the long trip. Our go-to area for first day shooting is a spot along highway 118 which traverses the park east and west, and serves as the main park road. Around mile marker 20, you will find an area with thousands of ocotillos. We call it the “ocotillo field”. It was there that I captured this photo of the Chihuahuan desert sunset. Had we gotten there one week earlier, we would have seen a desert floor covered with yellow flowers. At least I got a blooming prickly pear and a sun burst.
This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV using my Canon EF 16-35mm f/4 Lens set on 16 mm. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/11, shutter speed at 1/250th of a second and the ISO set at 100. I used a tripod for stability and my Kirk Rail to avoid parallax errors. This is a series of six images brought together and processed using Lightroom and completed in Photoshop using Nik Color Efex Pro. I then cropped the image to get this composition as the image was too wide to appreciate.
You can see my gallery for the West Texas area including Big Bend by clicking here. Please use the section below to post your comments, questions or suggestions.
© 2019 T. Kahler Photography
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