Feb 29, 2012 | Landscape Photography
You might have been wondering why we sat at Horseshoe Bend for so long. Well, you’d be surprised the photographic opportunities that can come your way when you stop to smell the roses. I heard the boats before I first saw them, then I saw them over in the shadows picking up their clients who were fishing. I wondered if I sat long enough if I could get some aerial clicks of there passing. That’s just what we did, we waited and then every so often a boat would go up stream or down stream, sometimes the same instance. What I had in my mind is an old image taken of a boat with a big wake and while I like what I captured, it’s not what I remembered in that old photo.
What are the elements that work and don’t work in this image? The boat itself isn’t that really visually cool, it doesn’t look like a fast racing boat. The wake though, that is everything! I cocked the camera, framed it all up and finished the photos based on the graphic highlight in the dark green water. Then there was the bank of the river which at times worked and other times didn’t. These are what we had to work with to make the photo.
The bottom photo is my favorite. It combines all the good, ignores the bad and as an “attitude” to the direction of the boat and its wake that works the best. That hint of shore in the top right corner is what works best for me, it gives the whole photo a sense of place. It was fun to sit there, legs hanging over the edge clicking away as the boats shot by down below. It was a great adventure!
Feb 29, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Horseshoe Bend, AZ just outside Page is a pretty popular place. I’d never been there so we decided to take K&M Adventures over there and give it a gander. After the short walk up and over the hill down to the edge, you see it, a big bend in the river that looks like a horseshoe from a plane. Oh, I get it, that’s how it got its name! Any who, the skies were my favorite, bald. The light, nice and hard…yummie! I walked up the edge to the north from where the trail stops (it’s just a 1000 foot drop) to an outcropping where I could comfortably sit, have no rocks on the edge sticking out in the frame and enjoyed the view.
With the 14-24AF, I set the camera to a 5 image bracket starting with a -1 and shot five frames to create this image. Really a pretty simple image to make at this point. This is what the eye saw sitting on the edge
We spent quite some time on that ledge shooting, watching, talking and then after a couple of hours we hiked back over the hill, got in the van and headed down the road. That’s when I asked, “What’s the subject” and with no answer per say I asked “So, how are you going to finish that photograph?” In my mind when shooting you’ve got to know the subject and if you’re going to finish it in post, you most definitely have to know, what’s the subject. So the van talk began.
We’re shooting Horseshoe Bend, that alone provides information on how we need to finish the image. To me, the first big problem is the major shadow on the left side of the frame. If you look at the “eye” view, it’s pretty massive. Ya, we shot HDR but that shadow is still pretty massive. On the flip side, that big piece of rock jutting out at you that makes the “bend” is lit pretty darn flat. That rock is anything but flat but the light doesn’t support reality. With that knowledge, we know the light is pretty contrasty, harsh, nasty, ugly and colorless all adding up to sucks! But here it is, you’re traveling on vacation and you’ve allotted just this one afternoon to see and photograph Horseshoe Bend. You get there and find what we found, very unromantic light and no real photograph. Do you turn around and go home without the photo or like us, click and make lemonade? How do you make lemonade out of this?
This is what we talked about in the van, how to make lemonade. We started with the HDR capture, a means of opening up the shadows a little while protecting highlights. But that wasn’t enough in my book. Using HDR to bust open that shadow will make the photo look like HDR and I don’t want that. So a simple Curve Adj Layer to lighten that left side was the first thing to do. Then, another Curve Adj Layer but this time to darken the right side of that jutting rock to give it some curve. Then I used Nik’s CEP4 Tonal Contrast to bring out the color. After all of this, we don’t have the photograph of a lifetime because when the light sucks, the light sucks. But we also don’t have garbage. We have a photo we can share the wonder of Horseshoe Bend and the viewer of our photograph doesn’t need sunglasses to view it. It’s a clean image which is the best we could do with what we were provided. Now you know what we talked about in the van as we headed down the road. Oh ya, that’s a photo of my fearless coheart Kevin sticking his camera over the edge to get the shot. That too is HDR :-)
Feb 28, 2012 | Landscape Photography
One of the many games I play in Monument Valley is “Find the Object” in its rock walls. I guess it caught on some how because after shooting the North Window, Bob simply yells out, “SR-71!” I got whip lash spinning to see this cloud up in the sky. It’s was better but had to change lenses. I still Like!
Feb 28, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Visual depth, there are many ways to obtain it in our photographs. The way I typically do it is with a strong foreground, middleground and background. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years. The other method I use which for some reason I’ve not seemed to mention is optical visual depth. While in Monument Valley this past week with our K&M Adventures, it dawned on me while we were photographing North Window that this was a perfect example of what I’m talking about.
The top photo was taken with a 70-200VR2 at 200mm. This is more or less the classic shot of North Window. You have way off in the distance a couple of mesas and by clipping a little bit of the window on the right and left, the eye can stop there while the imagination goes off into the distance to see those mesas. The reference point in the foreground permits the mind’s eye to slip into the background and creates the illusion of visual depth. Why illusion? What are you using to look at these photos? A computer monitor. It don’t get no flatter!
The bottom image was taken with a 16Fish and part of a lesson of fisheye panos. Here, we used the road to lead the eye back into the frame. We use the tree on the left to “hide” a little bit of rock so the eye continues down that road. While you see the North Window way off in the background, it is no longer the subject. Both images have visual depth and while both pointed at the same formation, they both have a different subject (we had a long discussion in the van about What’s the Subject). They both have very different visual depth even though they both have visual depth.
This lead to a conversation whether just because you have visual depth, do you have a photography? Does including that mean you have a good or great photograph? In all realities, there is no answer to these questions. I saw photos with visual depth that sucked. I saw photos with no visual depth that were stunning. I know personally when working a landscape, I find it very important for the viewer to be able to “fall into the landscape” in my photograph. I want them to feel as if there were standing next to me taking in that grand view. That requires a strong visual depth at the very least as a starting point in the photographic experience.
Feb 27, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Hot Air Balloon Gallery – Click Here for Big Images
(both galleries are the same, a mobile device friendly and a web big image size)
There were two reasons I set the dates for our K&M Adventures Monument Valley trip for this weekend, the phase of the moon (for star trails) and the balloon festival. Now just because you plan it doesn’t mean it will all work out. Two of the three mornings, there was no launch at all but the one morning they did launch and that’s all we needed. Here was my thinking, I want the color of the balloons to pop against the rock. If, and that’s a big if, you can have the balloons backlit, they glow bigtime. The problem is, the balloons keep moving so you might get that one or two cool frame, not the hundreds we came away with shooting front lit.
I filled 2040 images from the 90min of flight time. I went through and selected some of the one that are my favorites for this gallery. I’ve not mentally processed the shooting though. There were some things I learned to repeat and not repeat. And the most magical moment I still have to share. We are simply jumping here so this is all the blog I have time to post but hope you enjoy this small gallery of images. To say it was a gorgeous and inspiring morning of shooting is an understatement. There is more to come and share with you!
In the Bag
Feb 27, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Many moons ago, on our very first visit to Monument Valley we were befriended by Albert Jackson. At the time, he was just a person at Ford Point selling jewelry but after a couple of hours of conversing, we’d become friends. We’ve been friends every since! His family owns Ford Point and Albert is a tribal elder with a very rich family history and sense of tradition. Albert is not one of Monument Valley’s guides but being dear friends, he was happy to take our merry band on a backcountry tour like I’ve never had before. His knowledge of the Valley, past and present and willingness to share made our day simply amazing! We went to places I’m not really sure if I should talk about, they are sacred and there were tire or foot tracks so no one else had been there for a long time. I just want to publicly thank Albert for all he did, and for being my friend!
