Devil's Tower Monument in Wyoming

In the far right hand side of Wyoming is Devil's Tower. Aside from it's starring role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it has the distinction of being America's first national monument.

It is almost 1300 feet tall, 300 feet across the top and is a lava plug, left behind after the softer soil of a volcano has eroded away over time.

One of the great joys of photography for me is finding overlooked jewels. Usually, I select about 20% of a shoot for further processing and then archive the rest. I don't know why this did not make my original first cut, but I just found it in the archive of a trip that I took 2+ years ago. I like the strange balance of the heavy tower in the lower right compared to the wispy cloud on the upper left.

I tried one with and without a secondary cloud, and one mono. Do you have any preference? Any other crop or processing that might improve the shot?

Thanks,

Rad

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I like it. Not too sure about the black and white. It's nice but I think I prefer the colour version.

Wow.. I really like the B&W

how did you do that conversion, if you don't mind me asking?

banana wrote in post #2217510
Wow.. I really like the B&W

how did you do that conversion, if you don't mind me asking?

I don't remember the exact settings, but I opened the shot in Photoshop and then used Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer. If I remember correctly, I believe the settings were Red +130, Green +30 and Blue -30.

I also did a different process for the clouds, as the above technique whited them out. I used Red +100, Green and Blue each 0.

Then I just blended the two, so that the texture of the clouds was contributed from one conversion, and everything else from the other.

Rad

Very interesting Rad, and I presume that you cloned the cloud in #2 as otherwise the other clouds are identical? I think on balance the second one helps to emphasise the plug better and is my favourite although #3 is also nice.

We have a couple of volcanic plugs here in Edinburgh too. One is where Edinburgh Castle sits, and one is a hill called Arthur's Seat, and both plugs are around 350 million years old.

Nice shots.

Not sure why but I prefer #2. Thanks for sharing.

john 20d, gitzo and stuff

I'm all over #3 like a fat kid on a smartie.

Superb shots!

Would like to see that someday oh and the aliens on top that stop by from time to time apparently

I wonder how he supposedly free climbed that in the movie???

Nice shots, I like the first shot the best.

nice shot i like the B & W the best