I was in Las Vegas for my birthday in February and carved out time for a couple of trips to nearby Red Rock Canyon. There are plenty of options for hiking and climbing, which I hope to go back and take advantage of one day, but there’s also a 13-mile scenic loop that’s perfect for time-limited visitors like myself and my friends. We went around 3pm the first time, to catch the descent into golden hour.
It took a lot of willpower to not oversaturate the photos in post-processing, especially considering that RAW files are always desaturated at the start. But I wanted to stay true to the desert light, which I did find to actually be different enough from what I’m used to that I struggled a bit. This is one reason it’s good to step away from your photos for periods of time so that you can come back to them with a fresh perspective on what you’ve done before posting. (Which is why this took me so long)
(Ok…maybe I got a little crazy with that one. Just for fun. :-P)
Seeing the possibilities in the way the rays of light fell over the tops of th rocks also strengthened my resolve to get to places with nice, big mountains.
Our second trip was in the morning a couple of days later. It was like being on a movie set - even at only 9am the light was stark but in a good way, as if Clint Eastwood were waiting just around the next bend. You know what I mean.
Without the light obscuring the rocks to the west I also could now make out Skull Rock (last photo). Thousands of years ago the First Creek people would leave offerings at the base of the rock to ensure that monsoon season would return. When it did, streams of water would gush out of the two giant eyes, and they would say, “The great skull is crying, and we are saved.”
Sigh, fine, I made up the Skull Rock story, I don’t even know if anyone calls it that, but you can totally see it looks like a skull, right?!