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Wallpaper Details: Oregon's Painted Hills

High-resolution desktop wallpaper Oregon's Painted Hills by adairtd
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Oregon's Painted Hills

March 16th, 2010

This image was taken on a hiking trip in February of 2010, in the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I had just gotten a new camera so on my way back from Central Oregon I stopped to hike some of the trails and take some pictures. It was a nice and clear sunny day, and not too cold - perfect for hiking that area. I took this at the first parking area and trail.

The gray layers are mudstone, siltstone, and shale formed from sediments deposited on an ancient river floodplain. The black layers are manganese nodules or manganese stains. The red layers are ancient soil profiles (laterites) that formed on floodplain deposits. Surface weathering relatively quickly breaks down these rocks into a clay-rich surface coating that easily erodes during summer flashfloods and/or winter storms.

Canon EOS 7D, Canon 17-40mm F/4L.

44.650154, -120.266669

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blue » brown » canon » canon eos 7d » desert » landscape » nature » oregon » photography » sky »

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Comments from the Community

Posted By: fishy
about 14 years ago
Man that's awesome, those hills like unreal!
Posted By: ktulu
about 14 years ago
What a gorgeous photograph! Thank you for sharing.
about 14 years ago
Pretty amazing vista and a fantastic wallpaper. I am assuming you have used some sort of a grad filter here if so it seems to me that it was tilted to the right side a bit too much. Nevertheless it is still a great image. Keep up great work!
Posted By: lerch84
about 14 years ago
This is great!Clear and clean shot..wonderful sky and landscape!
Posted By: stubulman
about 14 years ago
Thank you for the geological information. Looking at the image (never having been to the area) that would have been my immediate assessment as well.

I love the elephantine rolls. They indeed do look organic. Very nice shot.
Posted By: firefly.serenity
about 14 years ago
That is waaaaay bizarre! I love it!
Posted By: BlackEagle754
about 14 years ago
Wow! I love it! Looks just great on my IPS panel!
Posted By: onis_uk
about 14 years ago
yes i like this ...well captured that man !
Posted By: Xinthose
about 14 years ago
blah blah, the world goes round; nice try though
This comment is rated: immature
Posted By: Beginning
about 14 years ago
Good work... Thanks for sharing.
Posted By: EyeCandy
about 14 years ago
Um...it looks like you took a picture of mountains and molded some playdough to put in front of it.
This comment is rated: immature
Posted By: Frostmint
about 14 years ago
@EyeCandy

Do some research before you embarrass yourself.

http://www.oregon150.org/wp-content/uploads/painted-hills_50.jpg
Posted By: firefly.serenity
about 14 years ago
@Xinthose - are you insane? This is one of the most amazingly surreal images I have ever seen. It's so real it looks fake. Are you that tired with the magic of planet Earth?

How anyone can be unimpressed by this is beyond me. Wake up and embrace it!
Posted By: Tophmeister
about 14 years ago
I want to go to the snowy mountain behind the scene :D
Posted By: adairtd
about 14 years ago
Wow, thanks for all of the compliments. This was one of the first photos from the 7d the same day I bought it.

No grad filter there, just a Hoya Pro-1 Digital circular polarizer on my 17-40 F/4L lens. I was just using the standard picture style, with the camera in AV mode. I made some minor changes in lightroom and exported the jpegs, but nothing major was done to the photo.
Posted By: Chris Gin
about 14 years ago
Stunning shot, the thumbnail doesn't do it justice.
Posted By: Petr Stefek
about 14 years ago
... horizon leans left ... Fundamental error ... sorry!
about 14 years ago
@ Peter Stefek... How can you conclude that fast that the horizon is leaning left. First of all it's not that obvious especially considering this particular scene. I would disagree with you that it would be a fundamental error even if it was but I do not think that is the case. I can see your point if we were talking about a city skyline with all the buildings tilted one way but in this case you simple can't arrive to that conclusion. Also there are times where a tilted image would be much more interesting than technically correct.
Posted By: Tim H.
about 14 years ago
I'm no photographer at all, but I can see exactly why the camera was tilted to the left a bit. To be honest, I am very grateful for the tilt. It works really well for this scene. If it weren't tilted, then this just wouldn't look right. Or, perhaps I should say that it just wouldn't look as interesting. Yeah, it would still have the color quality and depth, but this angle is that final touch that I think it needed.

Well done, adairtd! Thank you for sharing this!
Posted By: Wumba
about 14 years ago
The colors are beautiful, but I think the absence of a level horizon detracts from it.
Posted By: Geosim
about 14 years ago
Rule #1 when photographing landscapes is to keep the horizon level. It's very simple to do with a tripod and even easier to correct in post processing.

Though given the opposite dip of the red strata and the top of the hills in the foreground it certainly adds some interesting geometry to the image.
Posted By: adairtd
about 14 years ago
Well, the camera was level according to the built in level, which was all I had, at least level with gravity. That's good enough for me.
Posted By: Slick
about 13 years, 11 months ago
If you look at some of the cumulus clouds, their flat bottoms appear fairly horizontal. I think the tilt is due to the increasing elevation of the mountain range moving to the right and the way the clouds in the background are swept along -- the tilt might just be an optical illusion.

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