photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment
Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twelve: Using color to express ideas > Colors of Dawn, near Conway Summit, California, 2004
previous | next
17-OCT-2004

Colors of Dawn, near Conway Summit, California, 2004

Daybreak in the Eastern Sierras brings light and color to desert texture that is simultaneously mysterious and beautiful. The colors change very quickly. As the sun rises and the cloud cover shifts, the sagebrush glows in pink, red, brown, and green tones, while the snow capped Sierras are tinged in amber. For a few moments, the desert floor appeared as a reddish brown sea of sage, leading our eye to richly colored hills of the same color, and that is the instant of color I’ve preserved here. Red is the most powerful of all colors, and when it appears in such scale in nature, it can be breathtaking. The snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains add context to give this image its identity as high desert.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20
1/200s f/3.3 at 12.7mm iso80 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
share
Phil Douglis10-Mar-2006 21:57
It's always an honor, Ramma, when someone tells me that my picture reminds them of a painting. A painting is a work of pure imagination, while most photographs are rooted in describing realities. As expressive photographers, we must make our cameras become less descriptive and more imaginative if we are to succeed in triggering ideas and emotions in our viewers. By telling me that this photograph looks like a painting, you are saying to me that it seems more a product of the imagination, than of nature. I thank you for seeing this image as if it were a painting Ramma. I think it's the incredible colors that are at work here. I did not add them to the picture. Nature put them there for me, and I did my best to emphasize them with my vantage point and exposure choices.
Ramma 10-Mar-2006 17:55
the colours are so rich and impactful, it looks like a beautiful oil painting !
Phil Douglis18-Dec-2005 20:17
Thanks, Victor, for your kind words. I have always felt that luck will come to me if I can do whatever I can to invite it. I got up very early that morning so that I could be at this place when the sun hit those peaks and illuminated the foreground. I tried to do whatever was possible to make my own luck here, and it worked out for all of us. Thanks again.
Guest 18-Dec-2005 09:19
Very forceful image! Luck for the photografer to catch a magic moment; luck for the moment to have a photographer! And, obviously, lucky us!
Phil Douglis08-Dec-2004 03:39
Contrast is an important part of color theory, Lara. By contrasting one color to another, you not only arrest the eye of your viewer, but you also establish an idea. In this case, it's low country vs high country, as the golden brown sage and the white snows of the Sierra can tell us.
Lara S07-Dec-2004 14:25
Phil, what an awsome contrast between the foreground and the background. Foggy hazy Snowy moutains versus sharp brown ground.
Phil Douglis06-Dec-2004 19:35
Thanks, Marek, for pointing out the rhythmic repetition here between the sweeps of sage and the Sierra Nevada mountains themselves. The wind was blowing the sage and the light was slowly moving across the floor of the desert and back up into the mountains, so I could actually feel and see that motion you mention as I made this image. However, I think it is the repeating shapes of the vegetation and mountains, bathed in that delicate light, that propel us through this picture and stimulate a sense of motion within our imaginations.
Guest 06-Dec-2004 13:24
I like the way you have created interlocking sweeps in the foreground to mirror the postion of the mountains. This I think stems from your love of creating (or at least emphasising) natural rhythms. The light here does have a beutiful, delicate quality and it almost seems to move -- which is a great feat in photography.
Phil Douglis06-Dec-2004 00:44
Hi, April, and thanks for your comment. This image is a good example of being in the right place at the right time and making the most of the moment in terms of what the light is doing to the subject. That's not the sun coming at me, by the way. That's the sun reflecting off the low hanging morning clouds above the Sierras. The sun is coming from the side.
Guest 06-Dec-2004 00:31
beautifully captured image. i love how the sun is coming towards you.
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment