The sand dunes of Monument Valley like I’ve mentioned are a place I can get lost for weeks with a camera and never grow tired of the photographic possibilities. The first challenge is to not step and ruin your own photo. After that, the challenge is finding the pattern and that’s where the shadows come into play. Lastly there is the color. I really like these and just wanted to share them. I hope you enjoy as well.
The background is what makes it for me! That black sets off the color, the shape and texture. Now the curve isn’t the landscape, it isn’t the lens but rather the shadow. Coming through a whole in the mesa behind us, it was curved and what made the whole thing work. Now some little grasses were removed in the photo but otherwise it’s a straight shot. That’s the best kind of landscape photography, clean and simple. If you’re ever heading to Monument Valley, watch She Wore a Yellow Ribbon first and take note of the sand dunes. They aren’t the same now and it demonstrates how with time, they move. I wish I had the time to sit and watch that change with time, talk about a glorious symphony of nature!
If there is one thing I love to photograph and simply don’t get enough opportunities and that’s sand dunes. The patterns of light and shadow rolling up and down and just sooooo sensual! Here’s the trick to getting the shots I think. First, not to step in your own photo! Once your footprint is in the photo, it ain’t comin out so you have to be careful where you step. This is hard to do as you’re chasing the light which is constantly changing. Now it’s those patterns that make or break the photo IMHO. The top photo is one that I thought had promise and then after racing up the sand to it, it’s just too busy for the peace of the sand. I liked shadow but the rest….Then the bottom photos, you can see the before and the after. Here, there is just the tinniest of elements interrupting the pattern. Look at the difference when you remove those small elements. It’s the smallest details that can do you in no matter the photo.
Albert loves to have his photograph taken. He’s been in countless Hollywood movies and lord knows how many times he’s posed for tourists and yet, he never tires from it. So when K&M Adventures group first meet up with him at his home at Ford’s Point, he instantly asked if the group wanted to take his portrait on his bud, Pistol. While the view is gorgeous, Albert & Pistol get lost in the scene. Now when you look at it mathematically, the duo take up less then 1% of the entire frame. With that small percentage, can we still make them standout?
By moving physically to my left and then down a little, I put the duo in a place were they don’t meld into the background as much. Albert & Pistol are still small in the frame, but at least now they don’t look like an accident. It’s a very simple thing to do but I see many photographs where this simple technique isn’t being used. I just got Tiffen’s Dfx pluggins for Photoshop so decided to give them a whirl in finishing. I used one of their polarizers on these images. I like the effect, I might have gone a little heavy handed but I do like the effect. More to learn…I’m happy!
And here’s Albert & Pistol up close. Neither one are spring chickens but they still are both full of life. I enjoy all the time we get to spend together talking, much to learn from this soul of the earth!
When you drive the loop in Monument Valley, half the time your subjects are front lit and the other half, they are back lit. Because your subjects are so large, if you’re on the backlit side, you have a whole lot of time with no direct sun to work with. Because your subjects are so large, you’re missing some large photographs. The rock of Monument Valley isn’t all red. It’s every shade of red with a whole lot of veins of gray and black sprinkled in. When you shoot the face in full sun, you loose a lot of those veins and to me, a lot of the character that is the Valley. So I do tend to haunt the shadow side thinking about bringing out the character that is the Valley.
Here’s two approaches I use when going to the shadowy side. They both have one thing in common, HDR. To pull out the character in the rock, I need that range of clicks while also preserving the detail in the sky. After that, I want something in the sky and this is typical, I’ll put either clouds or the sun. I want that element for both the white aspect of a B&W photo as well as space and visual depth. The sun can add drama when done correctly. I posted this photo of an example of it not being done correctly. What’s wrong with it? I forgot to clean the front element. That dust on the front element is what’s creating all those circular UFOs in the sunburst. What a pisser! Understand that if I didn’t use HDR, you wouldn’t see any information in the rock, it would be all black. While there are times when that is cool, when working the shadowy side of the Valley, I tend to want to bring out the character in the rock.
I do enjoy greeting the day watching the sun rise. There is just something about that moment that all seems right in the world as the light comes up, the birds begin to sing and the clouds race to meet the coming sun. Last week in Monument Valley on our K&M Adventure, it was one of those mornings. We were out early heading around the loop to be in place in case the balloons launched (which they didn’t this morning). When I looked out of my room at the View, what you see in the top photo was what got me excited except the cloud had already changed alot by the time we got in place to shoot. I love clouds, they simply add a whole new dimension to anything subject. Kevin did his best to get us down in place but the same winds that kept the balloons from launching just scattered that beautiful cloud.
A classic case of chasing the light in the Valley. Just because there is pretty color in the sky, I don’t stop to shoot. The romance everyone associates with a sunrise or sunset if the very minimum that needs to be in our photographs. So with the color has to be the foreground, middleground and background and a lot more. You need shapes in silhouette as well and then finally, you need them clouds to take you eye and heart around the entire photograph. At least, that’s what I shoot for. So in the top photo for example, it’s no mistake that the break in the cloud rims the left side of Merritt Mesa.
These three photos were taken over a period of about 18min and over a distance of about 150 yards. The first photo we were at the bottom of a wash and as the clouds scattered and the sun rose, I didn’t like the foreground so I ran up slope to make the middle image and then to the top of the ridge to make the bottom photo. I like all three, each has a little something different but of these three, the top is my favorite. John Wayne rode over that dirt road and on the morning chasing the light in the Valley, I could imagine him doing it again.