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Big Bend National Park

This is one of our favorite collections, not just because it focuses on our favorite national park, but because it highlights the beauty and energy of the park. These photos are classic. Join this group and add your own photos!

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Arca at Santa Elena Overlook - <span>Arca Swiss Discovery 4x5 view camera set up overlooking Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park.See more about this location and the final image I made on my blogthelargeformatcamera.blogspot.com/2012/05/santa-elena-can...See more images from Big Bend on my websitewww.wildernessphotographer.net/Texas/Big-Bend-National-Pa...</span>
Emory Peak Trail
Sunset at The Window
dreams of big bend - <span>outrageous storm rolling thru Austin tonight, right in the middle of my precious sleep, haha. going thru some old Big Bend photos while I wait for the lightning and hail to stop. we desperately needed some rain, so that's at least good. plant damage assessment in the morning. in the meantime, a remake of an old fave of mine.- - - My Big Bend Set - - -
some other photos from the trip,
including some really cool panoramics.playlist</span>
Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive
ERUPTION!   (MG_3289) - <span>At the end of the Cretaceous about 65 mya, (million years ago) Big Bend went from an area that was being compressed to one that was being pulled apart. This was caused by huge movements called plate tectonics. The  Pacific plate (called the Farallon plate) had suddenly done something unusual- it went from being shoved down into the lower crust and mantle and instead it broke and slid horizontally under the thin western North America continental plate. As the eastern edge of the Farallon plate moved further and further under the western North America plate, it caused the overlying plate to crumple and be squeezed. This led to the two big thrust systems in the west: the older Sevier thrust that is in western Utah and western Wyoming and the younger Laramide thrust that formed the Rockies through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and finally the Big Bend area of Texas. What happened next set the stage for the next big geologic episode in Big Bend.After the Farallon plate stopped moving east under the North America Plate, it started to slowly sink into the lower crust and mantle. This sinking is what initiated the pulling apart along and west of the Laramide thrust. As the western North America plate was being fractured and pulled apart, the melting Pacific Farallon plate started to produce lots of hot buoyant magma which began to rise up along the cracks caused by the pulling apart. The Christmas Mountains just north of the Park are the result of those first volcanoes that were caused by the eruption of the magma produced by the sinking Farallon plate. The eruptions there are about 45 million years old. For the next 20 million years, Big Bend was transformed into the land of fire.Goat Mountain which we saw the back of at the Sotol Vista Overlook photograph (2nd photo back in this photostream), has been sliced in half and lets us see the internal structure of a volcano when we look at it from the west. The deep vee at its crest is the throat of the volcano and we can see several eruptive events in cross section. The light yellow and green layer at the bottom of the mountain is the Wasp Spring Surge deposit. You would not have wanted to be around then. “Surge” doesn’t sound so bad but think huge explosion with a tidal wave of hot rock flowing and racing away from the source being mixed with red hot debris falling from the sky. The volcano exploded because there was a lot of water in the magma which, as it travels up, explodes like a just-opened, shaken, cola. The water tends to be at the top of the magma blob coming up because it is lighter and will rise faster. Once the magma with water has exploded and erupted, a thicker viscous lava can flow out in slow moving rivers instead of violent explosions. The two reddish layers on top of the Wasp Spring Surge deposit are rhyolite lava flows that were erupted next out of the volcano. The line between them represents a period of time maybe 100 to 1000 years when the volcano was quiet.I was very lucky and the clouds that were swirling around the Chisos Mountains (just behind Goat Mountain) lined up perfectly and made it look like the eruption was starting all over again!</span>
Terlingua Abaja on Terlingua Creek, Big Bend, Texas - <span>This started life as an infrared panorama shot on a hill overlooking Terlingua Abaja on Terlingua Creek. Hancolored with some wild soft and oil pastels, then re-fried in the digital darkroom.Historic marker for this spot:
www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=53958</span>
Black Bear - <span>On lost mine trail.</span>
sotol vista sunset
mountain lion kill
desert sunrise
sotol vista sunset
desert view
santa elena canyon
Desert
Big Bend National Park - <span>Mexican Black Bear in Big Bend National Park, Texas. We came upon this guy in the Chisos Basin just north of the lodge.</span>
View from "Lost Mine Trail"2
Albino Yucca?
Behind the Screen Door! - <span>Big Bend National Park, Texas</span>
The Milky Way over the Chisos Mountains - <span>The stars at night are big and bright
deep in the heart of Texas...That's the way an old song starts and it is true.Big Bend can have excellent star viewing conditions if the dust is not too bad. This view of the Milky Way was taken only 45 minutes after dusk when the Milky Way appeared just to the west of the Chisos Mountains seen in silhouette.This is my first attempt at wide field star landscape photography and I haven't learned all of the acquisition and processing techniques but these fabulous Big Bend skies can make even a beginner look decent ;)</span>
Yucca and Ocotillo - <span>A variation on an image previously uploaded. This is a combination of infrared false color (shot with Hoya R72) and handtinting on paper using oil pastels and pastel pencils.</span>
Colors warming up
The Tornillo Creek
Century Plant Blossoms
Sunset on Casa Grande
Badland
Tuff Canyon Trail
Sotol Vista sunset
desert
Sotol Vista
Sunset at the Window - <span>Color edited</span>
View from top of "Lost Mine Trail" - <span>Color edited</span>
I Spy a Deer - color edit - <span>Testing Lightroom's capabilities of</span>
Deer - color edit - <span>Testing Lightroom's capabilities of</span>



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