As noted elsewhere in this gallery, Big Bend National Park offers two trails leading to the geological formation of a “pour off” named, the Window; a 2.8 mile trail descending 980 feet from the Chisos Basin Trailhead and a 2.2 mile trail descending 500 feet from the Chisos Basin Campground. A round trip, then, is either 5.6 miles that consumes about 4 hours of your time or 4.4 miles that consumes 3 hours of your time. In addition to these two trails leading to (or into) the Window, there is also a 0.3-mile-round-trip Window View Trail that avoids the rustic routes though the canyon. This trail will not take you to the Window, but rather to an overlook area. And if you’re going to start hiking late, the overlook is recommended for viewing the setting sun without leaving you on a trail after dusk. This trail is located adjacent to the Chisos Basin Trailhead.
However, to photograph at sundown from the vantage point of the image shown on this page, you’ll need to be at the location of the Window. You’ll also need to hang around until sundown (which leads to the ill-advised result of hiking out of the canyon in the dark).
As for photographing near or at sundown: it is a matter of dealing with shadows. Absent a fill flash the resulting image, then, can render a dark foreground if exposed for the distant background or a dark background if exposed for the foreground. In this instance I exposed for the background and, even though I used a minor amount of fill flash, still “underexposed” the foreground. (The foreground was actually exposed to approximate what was visible at the time, but the result is considered “underexposed” for the purpose of image detail.) Post downloading the photograph, I then extensively edited the lighting and color content so as to reveal detail throughout the image. The result is this photograph boarding on the surreal. The unaltered image is The Window, No. 22A (image 01 in this gallery).
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 9.86 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.