Thursday, January 8, 2009

Dirt Tornado


On a recent trip to West Texas I tried to capture one of these dust tornadoes several times. I was driving through a prairie valley somewhere between Big Bend National Park and Fort Stockton when I started seeing these things pop up. It must have been just the right combination of location, 100 degree plus heat, and arid conditions [4 inches of rain in 8 months.] It’s not the dynamic shot I was looking for but after all at some point you can’t afford to keep stopping if you want to get anywhere, right?

Tech: Oly E-3, 50-200 Zuiko @ 200, f7.1 @ 1/5000 and ISO 1250, Aperture Priority Post Processing: Duplicate Background>Crop>TA “Simplify”>Gradient Mask Dark to Light Top to Bottom>Curves>Levels

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