Here are two images from my recent trip to Maine and Colorado. The first image is of a stairway in Fort Knox, Maine. That’s right: there is a Fort Knox in Maine! Both the Fort Knox in Maine and the better-known Fort Knox in Kentucky were named after Henry Knox. Major General Knox, considered one of the United States “founding fathers,” was Chief of Artillery in the American Revolutionary War and the first United States Secretary of War.

The image below was made while slogging up the sand slope in Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado near the New Mexico border. It’s a single RAW capture, processed three times using multi-RAW EV variations to account for the vast dynamic range between the clouds in the sky and the foreground in partial shadow.

Great Sand Dunes NP is a wonderful location, and a kind of adult playground in the sand. I hadn’t been there since I was a youngster. I enjoyed photographing the location, and feel it is comparable to the wonderful austerity of the Eureka Dunes section of Death Valley.