[Leica] Great Sand Dunes National Park

[Howard Ritter]

We’re currently finishing up our first major (3 weeks) RV trip. One of the most memorable stops was at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado. Here prodigious amounts of sand produced over eons by erosion of the San Luis Mountains has been carried by prevailing westerly winds across the San Luis Valley, eventually getting deposited as the wind becomes turbulent at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Easterly winter winds push the sand back down off the mountains so that it has accumulated in a field miles across and about 225 m/750ft high. From up close at the base, the dune field is awesome (in the old sense, before the word was bleached of its meaning), massive, serene, dwarfing even the cloud shadows that fall on it.

Here is a link to my favorite several images:  http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/dunes/

All shot with my favorite grab-and-go camera, the Sony NEX7. I was unsure about trusting $20K worth of M240 and lenses to the security of an RV for several weeks, but I think that caution was unnecessary. Anyway, this way I could use a circular polarizer, which I routinely use for landscapes, especially when blue sky is in the picture.

C&C solicited and welcomed.

—howard