Devil's Honeycomb

[NancyP]

"Devil's Honeycomb" is one of the local names for this small rhyolite volcanic extrusion about 400 ft high. Like the famous Devil's Causeway in Ireland, and other similar formations around the world, the cooling rock developed regular vertical stress fractures so the wearing rock breaks away in columns or bricks. This extrusion is about 1.6 billion years old, one of the oldest exposed rocks in the US. Official name: Hughes Mountain Conservation Area, in southern MO.

The light was rather harsh on this afternoon, so I tried a fake "orthochromatic" B&W conversion (just the blue filter in LR). The formation in question is about 4 ft high. Everything is rather harsh on this exposed rock, not much grows except lichen, a grasshopper that eats lichen, a succulent flower called rock pink. Where there is shallow soil (broken-down lichen) some grass or small shrubs try to grow. Ecologically this is a really interesting area.

[maddogmurph]

I prefer the black and white, but I'd like the details in the shadow pulled out by like 1%.

[Bob_B]

I like it a lot. On my monitor the lichens on the b/w image seem over-sharpened or overly contrasty, especially when compared with the color image. Just an artifact of uploading to LuLa?

[NancyP]

Black and white was my way of dealing with the rather harsh light. I will play with the shadows a bit, I had pulled a little bit of shadows up, will try a little further shadow raising. The sharpening was LR standard "for screen" on export, nothing unusual. I suspect that the LR preset blue filter has really increased the contrast of blue-gray-green lichen vs. red rock, and in part I was looking for a contrast boost - more extreme than the LR preset green filter. I might play around with some custom conversions for a filter effect slightly between blue and green - I like the sky white-out as a fake-orthochromatic effect. Thanks for comments and ideas.

This is a plug for making the best of your local landscape opportunities. I have decided that medium and intimate views of geology have some promise in this region (Missouri / the Ozarks / Mississippi River limestone bluffs). We don't have "glamor" landscape here, but I love this region. I guess that I will be boning up on geology (bedside reading, Roadside Geology of Missouri).

[sdwilsonsct]

We don't have "glamor" landscape here...

Looks pretty darn glamorous relative to S Saskatchewan. 

Hopefully the next time you are there the sky will be a bit more interesting.

[NancyP]

In the Ozarks, we have rolling hills, sometimes called mountains, with very gentle slopes or with bluff faces, total elevation above surrounding watercourse is usually 100 to 400 ft. One place in Missouri has elevation gain of about 600 ft, but that is the exception. This rock structure in the photo is about a meter high, and I composed the shot to eliminate the adjacent taller shrub.