Badlands, Before the Heat

Sunrise here gives you about forty minutes of usable light before the contrast becomes unmanageable. After that the ridges flatten out and stay flat until evening.

The trick is not the light, it is the layering: near ridge, far ridge, mountain, sky. Four planes, each a slightly different value. Lose one and the picture becomes a texture study.

Two frames stitched at 35mm rather than one at 20mm — the wider lens stretched the near ridge until it stopped reading as land.