I hope it’s not too late to make this post for this week’s photography challenge, Out of This World.

I saw the challenge Wednesday, and I have been thinking about what to do for the challenge. Ages ago I had a dark room, and I used to process my own black-and-white film and make my own prints as well as process my own E6 slide film. So, I thought it would try a couple of things that I used to do in the darkroom for this week’s challenge. Here are a couple pictures that I took on my trip to Arches National Park earlier in February.

To make the featured image I took my original photo and first converted it to black-and-white. Then I added a deep orange filter and got the density set to where I liked it. For me Arches National Park has always had an otherworldly feel to it. I guess I am a nerd, but I often think about Star Wars Episode One on Tatooine where they were having the pod races when I see southeastern Utah and the red rock country. I think the orange filter gives the black-and-white photo a little feel of an otherworldly place where perhaps the sunlight is quite a bit warmer than we see here on earth.

The second photo is also from my trip to Arches National Park last month. To make this one I simply changed the color temperature up to about 18,000° Kelvin. Normal sunlight is around 5500°K, and I believe it was shot around 6000° Kelvin. I also bumped up the color intensity a fair amount. So again, bringing this more orange tint into the picture along with a more intense orange and red toning seem to place the shot on an alien world, maybe somewhere like Mars.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these. I would love to get your feedback as to what you think about my artistic attempts.