Nine Days Across the Outback: Day Two

Uluru.

I mentioned getting off the plan at the Ayer's Rock resort, and being surrounded by red sand in every direction. I fibbed a little. There is red sand and some low scrub everywhere, but in the distance, the horizon is dominated by the Rock. Uluru is what the Aborigines call it, and "Ayer's Rock" is what it was to the Europeans. Anywhere you go in this area, you can see Uluru. Even out of the corner of your eye, it strikes you. To me, it almost seemed like an affliction of the land -- bright red rock breaking through the skin of the earth. That leads me to today's photo:

"His Red Right Hand"

The night before at Uluru, I had gotten screwed by a cloudy, mushy sunset. No sun at all, just gray. Light is important at sunrise & sunset at Uluru, because when you have soft sunlight hitting it directly, it glows, and that's what you see in this photo.

Had our tour group been a bit faster getting up in the morning (recovering from some drinks and dingo wrangling the night before), we would have arrived here before dawn. I would have loved to see what sort of colors popped out of the sky with a long exposure in the pre-dawn hours, but I'll take this one instead. :)

Arriving at Uluru was a bit of a mob scene at sunrise. There were literally dozens of people, all of them with cameras and varying levels of expertise. I wanted to wide, so I kept edging down the road you see above until I was well to the side of the other photographers. This took some persistence though -- people kept seeing me, with a giant camera and tripod, and assumed I knew what I was doing, and would move ot the side of me. This finally stopped when I finally talked to someone doing this, and offered to e-mail them my photos if they would please stop. :P

This particular shot was near the end of sunrise proper, as our tour guide was anxiously tapping her foot to go drop us off for a walk around the base of Uluru. I was extraordinarily blessed with an amazing sky and insane clouds, but I wanted to give this photo some action leading viewers into the scene, so I stopped in a place where shadows converged on Uluru, and I found that it really draws the viewers in. Not everyone agrees with this though -- some people find the shadows too distracting, but I like the low key way it puts myself in the scene.

This photo was shot on my tripod, with my trusty Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8, which probably proved itself my most used lens when crossing the outback.

If you like the photos of Uluru, you can enjoy more from that area here, and the road to King's Canyon (where I was the next day) here.