Photos

On the border between Nevada and California, a remote, majestic mountain ridge, White Mountains stand. A magic world, more than 600 million years old, 3.000 square km of high desert landscape, better said of the Moon on the Earth, impressed me deeply. There, in total solitude, between 10.000 and 14,246 feet altitude, on the edge of possible in terms of survival, the oldest living creatures of the World - ancient Pinus longaeva (Bristlecone Pine) grow. There one can admire trees which grew already when Cesar ruled Roman Empire, when Christ was born, when Pharaohs built pyramids. The oldest known tree is 4.700 years old, the oldest dead trunk found has nearly 9.000 years.

Aperture priority, matrix metering. Scanned by Nikon CoolScan IV-ED. Cropped, hue was shifted toward yellow and red, since high mountain light was fairly cool. Contrast was slightly increased using Curves. The sky was masked (Magic Wand tool) and mask shrank for a few pixels. Gaussian blur 2 pix radius at 4.000 pix picture width. Resampled to 800 pix width. Mask inverted and wood/trees sharpened using Unsharp mask 50% level, 2 pix radius. JPEG level 44% (Corel PhotoPaint notation).