Sands Of Time

I love the colors in this.

For some reason I am imagining this as a quite stunning emulsion lift. Of course that will be a challenge since it's a neg. If you are willing, let me suggest re-photographing a print on fuji fp100c and lifting the emulsion....

Very impressive! But what makes this sandstone have colour like this? Does it depend on a very special light at some particular time of the day/year? It looks surreal/unreal, but having seen other pictures from the same area with roughly the same "unreal" colours, I don't doubt it's reality. So, what is the explanation to this very special colour phenomenon?
//Bertil

Bertil, the sands have a rather large cinnabar mineral content, or at least the waters that carved them did. The stone in northern Arizona around Vermilion Cliffs is... well, vermilion, a very vivid family of pigments based on cinnabar. You may also see a bit of colour temp difference as well- no offense to Paul; I like what I see! But the direct light and the shade apparently have quite different colour temps. This film handles the spread quite well, but nevertheless I think the shaded regions are pushed a wee bit further into the blue than they would be with homogenous 5000K light. That said, I have seen everything from vivid red to vivid blue in some places around there and Death Valley, where there are are all sorts of minerals in the sandstone.

lovely composition and the colors are fabulous. You might consider a judicious crop, however. The highlights at the bottom of the image are blown out, and the focus is not sharp on the lower rh corner and up along the rh side. Of course, it's hard to get perfect focus without using a large format camera with these types of images. Beautiful shot, though.

Wonderfum colors , love it.
Ludo.

What a beautiful image, colors and composition. You captured ages and ages of erosion forever in a mere second. That's what photography is capable of!