After my excursion in Utah, I went to Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. Located about an hour from Las Vegas, I first came here in 2014 on a 1/2 day trip from a company called Pink Jeep Trips. Even though it was a good way to familiarize myself to what is there, the problem I experienced was being there during the middle of the day from about 10am to 2pm...often the worst time of the day for landscape photography. This time I had more freedom to see the park early in the morning as well as late in the afternoon and the dividends paid off. 

On one of the evenings, as seen above, I witnessed one of the most incredible glows from a pink sky where the light seemed bounce off the rocks in glorious fashion.  This rock with the stripes is known as the Fire Wave. If you are going to take a photo hike to one place in the park, this would be my pick and there are numerous compositions you can take of this stratified rock formation. I also had fun with compositions for rock abstracts and close ups without any sky!

There are numerous small arches and other hidden features in the sandstone here. Here, I placed a wide angle lens inside one of the small arches. It can make the arches seem bigger than they really are.  

A photography method that I am beginning to do more of is "focus stacking". In the two pictures immediately above and below, I have combined three images together into one image. In one of the images, I set the focus point a short distance away to get what is close to the camera to be sharp in that picture. In another image, I have the focus point far away to get what is in the distant background in focus. In a third image, the focus is set in between what is near and far. I then make a composition of these three images into one image so that it is sharper from front to back than what it would be if I just took one image alone. 

I love the sculpted rocks in these desert washes here. While Valley of Fire State Park is a very colorful place with both red and multicolored rocks, the interesting textures can sometimes make for good black and white images as well. In short, one might convert images to black and white when the light, form, or texture in the scene is more compelling than the hues of the subject matter. Black and white can be a good choice when the color in a photo serves only as a distraction from the message you want the image to convey.  

In some of the photos I took, I found the somewhat uniform white/dull gray clouds in the sky to be uninteresting. What if we converted the color images to black and white?

Perhaps in some instances, shapes, textures and patterns can play a bigger role than the color? In many cases there is not a right or wrong answer and the end decision is personal and subjective.

Below, I have made some more comparisons between color and images I converted to black and white. Which do you prefer?