More of Mineral Mountain Road, and fun with Photomatix

I went a little further south on Mineral Mountain road yesterday than I had the last time I was out there. There was a big storm far to the south, but I was hoping I might get into some rain. I was pretty sure that I would at least see some dust.

I went by the petroglyphs on the way out to Mineral Mountain Road. There were puddles full of tadpoles.

There were very few people out there. Too hot, I guess. It was around 108 when I left the pavement.

Tadpoles.

The further south I went on Mineral Mountain Road, the rougher it got. I figured it was OK, though, because it was mostly uphill. If I could go uphill over the rough spots, I would be able to go back downhill. I kept going until I got to a peak. The area looked vaguely familiar. If I was where I thought I was, the road would soon be so bad that it would be difficult to traverse on foot. There was a nice view of a small mountain and I got out of the truck to get some pictures. By the time I got out, though, dust was moving in front of the mountain.

Dust moving in to obscure the view.

I took my time turning around to get pictures of the Superstition Mountains in the other direction because I figured I had plenty of time to do that before the dust got in the way. The dust was sneaking by behind some hills to the east, though. When I turned around, the Supes were about to be hidden by dust. I quickly took some HDRI's.

HDRI made with typical settings. Ho-hum, and the dust hardly shows up.

Playing around with the settings. Now the dust stands out.

Zoomed in some.

I played around with Photomatix settings last night and got some interesting looking pictures.

It's hard to tell that there is dust in this picture, but I like the way it looks.

This is 20 or 30 minutes after the leading edge of the dust storm had gone by. The orange air is dust.

Click below to see all of the pictures.

2012_08_11