Cellpic Sunday – 26 September 2021

Flaming Gorge Area, Wyoming.

U.S. Highway 191 crosses the Green River at a dam and reservoir in northern Utah. The gorge was carved over the centuries by the Green River. The manmade lake that was created by the Flaming Gorge Dam extends into southern Wyoming and it is known as the Flaming Gorge Reservoir. The entire area is also known as the Flaming Gorge Recreational Area.

The highway actually crosses over the top of the dam, and if it’s open when you go by, you can stop at the visitor center. We happened to be traveling on Sunday so the facility was closed for us, though we were able to use the public restrooms and take a break, anyway.

We continued northbound through the small town of Dutch John, Utah, and only a few miles down the road, we crossed the border into Wyoming. Though the highway is some miles from the gorge at this point, the Green River floodplain is wide so there are plenty of views of the western edge of the gorge.

About the photo: This image is a composite panorama of two snapshots from my Samsung S20U. Along the highway, there are some pull-offs that provide a view of the gorge though it is quite some distance as U.S. 191 angles northeast across Wyoming while the Green River meanders from the northwest. After some basic tweaks in Lightroom, I dropped the photo into Luminar AI to sharpen and add definition to the details. When I was finished tweaking, the grass in the foreground was much more vivid, distracting the viewer from the view of the gorge in the background. I used the HSL tool in Luminar to decrease the intensity of greens and yellows to tone down the vibrant color of the grass.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dash cam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

17 comments

    • As it happened, earlier this week, we went through the best parts of Flaming Gorge, a diversion we waited to make until the fall on the trip we are currently taking.
      This image doesn’t do justice to the stunning beauty of the gorge. More detailed photos to come in future posts.

    • Thanks. I enjoy creating photos with defined foreground, mid- and backgrounds. As I noted in an earlier comment, our trip through the gorge area (instead of by it) happened earlier this week.
      We found it absolutely gorgeous, and we now have a new scenic drive from Utah to Green River Wyoming to share in a future post.

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