Tension and Union

The east shore of Pyramid Lake in Nevada is one of the most eerily beautiful places in the world. It's an enormous lake in the middle of a desert. For a body of water so large, it's almost scary how isolated it is. To get to this spot, once you get off the empty highway, was an eight mile drive down a dirt road, and then a hike over a jagged expanse of rocks. In any case, ever since I saw the amazing set of rock formations on the far side of the lake two years ago, I've been dreaming of getting this kind of shot.

It was tricky getting enough light to capture the reflection of the rock while still getting the subtle tones in the sky. The use of a polarizer was of course a key thing. Very minimal post-production...a curve adjustment layer on the sky to darken the blue tones slightly without changing the reflection, and then a slight bump on the red midtones and yellow highlights (mostly these things are done in post production to compensate for the fact that shooting digital, I always shoot at -1 saturation and -1 contrast settings...)