The Tale of Two Sand Dunes
I first visited Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve in 2010, but when I started this project in 2013, and looked through those shots, I hadn't really captured that single iconic shot I was looking for. One day, while on the Great Sand Dunes NPS site, there was an image in the gallery that was exactly what I had in mind!To my surprise, there was a link to get more information about a high resolution version of the file.
When I called the visitor center, not only did I find someone to talk to about it, I was talking to Patrick Myers, the National Park Ranger who took the photo! I told him about my project, and he offered to put the large digital file onto a CD and mail it to me. So, although I really wanted to use my own photography in the posters, who better than someone who literally lives and breathes Great Sand Dunes every single day!
Armed with the digital content, as well as Patrick Myers consent, I started work on the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve poster. The photograph featured the sand dunes in the foreground and the Sangre de Christo mountain range in the back. The shot was taken late in the afternoon, so that the dunes cast long shadows.
After completing the photo-graphic process, I added the other graphic elements -- headlines, text, logos, etc. And the poster was ready to go.
In July of 2014, I visited Great Sand Dunes again, and although I had my cameras, I was there to show Patrick Myers, as well as bookstore staff, the poster I had created. Of course, Murphy's Law came into play, as my large format printer died the day before...and I wasn't able to get a good print to show them, and had to resort to an on-screen version on my laptop.
Well the good news was that they loved it! But they did have a couple of suggestions. The first was to add in the foreground, Medano Creek, which has a seasonal flow, mostly from the spring runoff. The second suggestion was to make the dunes themselves a little more orange color. That was actually the easy part.
Again, I went back to the well (no pun intended), and looked at my earlier Sand Dunes photos to see if I had any shots featuring the water in Medano Creek. And I hit the jackpot. I had a great shot of the water with the sand dunes in the background in a pretty similar perspective. Decades of work in Photoshop prepared me for the next step, where I had to integrate the water into the existing photo...which did not have any to begin with. I also needed to get the water to mimic the same time of day as the original photo...and ultimately ended up brightening the whole scene...allowing for a little more daylight to light up the dunes and reflect off the water.
I had a very short run of the new poster printed up at Colt Printing in Boulder, and when they were done, mailed off a couple of copies for the staff at Great Sand Dunes to enjoy. When they arrived, Patrick Myers sent me an email:
Rob,
We got them, and they look perfect! You have nailed it.
Thanks again!
Patrick Myers
Park Ranger - Interpretation, Visitor Services, Publications and Web
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
So now I have the dilemma of what to do with two versions? The original, darker version is actually quite striking -- and has been one of my best sellers, despite the fact that Great Sand Dunes, only gets about 275,000 visitors each year.
So, let's put it to a vote and see what we all think collectively!
OLD vs NEW