Magic In The Painted Hills

Magic sunset light on a magical landscape. I know that South Dakota has its own brand of "Painted Hills." This isn't that one. This is a lesser known location in eastern Oregon. I've made a conscious effort to portray and preserve the colors of this landscape as my eye and camera saw them because I have seen many images of these hills on the Web that are so botched in terms of color fidelity as to be a real turnoff. Anyway, this is a great place to photograph, especially in May when the crevices of the hills are filled with small yellow wildflowers. It's also a great place for abstracts. The colors in the layers of soil are volcanic ash from repeated volcanic explosions in the nearby Cascade Mountain Range that drifted to this part of Oregon and mixed with different vegetation over some 250 million years of geological and climate change to produce these stunning colors.