Bryce Canyon - day 1

Colder than a Witch's ...

Arrived in Bryce Canyon to find a beautiful day. It was cool, as was expected being at 8000 feet, but the sun filled the valley with gorgeous light. After setting up camp, I drove to the inspiration overlook to get my first glimpse of the amphitheater and the famous 'hoodoos'. In the afternoon the sun is behind you and shadow moves across the hoodoos, creating amazing contrasts. I set my camera up for a sweeping pano (the only way to really get this canyon in my opinion) and waited for the proper moment. As I waited, I noticed a dark cloud slowly sweeping in from the west ... a harbinger of things to come? I figured there'd be some interesting light around this cloud so I patiently waited and watched. As I stood there, the air grew progressively colder and the wind started to blow rather hard. I'd read that the forecast for all the mountains was for high winds but no where did they say anything about bad weather. I figured it was just a passing cloud and went about my business. Little did I know...

Bryce Canyon from Inspiration Point

Bryce Canyon is an amazing place. Over millions of years wind, ice and water have carved the most unusual structures. Like a massive pipe organ, hundreds of hoodoos (interesting name) in every direction thrust skyward. No single snap of the shutter can capture the majesty of this place. So, camera gear in hand I slowly worked my way to the highest observation point and prepared to execute an HDR pano ... roughly 180 degrees. Now, it's important to be patient, especially when there are clouds in the area. Light plays across the amphitheater and the image changes from one second to the next. If you're lucky, you'll get just that moment when some key element of the frame is illuminated by the most gorgeous light. Then you scramble to get all your images (in this case, 54 separate shots).

Bryce Canyon from Inspiration - 16mm (1.6 crop), f/18, various shutter, ISO 100, license CC BY-NC 4.0

Click on image to get a bigger view. As with my Horseshoe Bend image, I worked with Photomatix and Photoshop (with a little help from Lightroom) to get this image. The proces is pretty straight forward ... take the raw images (I use .dng which all these tools understand) into Photomatix to create just the image you want, then batch process to get all the groupings on the same page. Bring the resulting images (I use Adobe Bridge since they are not officially in Lightroom yet) into Photoshop to create the panorama. I always use the cylindrical option and check all the extra choices as this helps Photoshop find the correct solution when the images are difficult. It doesn't take all that long (10 minutes usually) to get the final reslt and then it's a matter of finding the best crop from the strange outline you get. Sometimes there are compromises and you often lose parts of the image you'd rather keep. That life, unfortunately. The starting image was compelling but the central formation and the sun-tipped hoodoos all were a bit too orange. I used luminescence masks to select both the darkest and lightest parts of the image and then selectively painted to soften the garish oranges and to bring out some of the darker features (especially the distant landscape). The result is, in my humble opinion, striking. It captures the majesty of this special place and shows just how awesome my Canon 16-35, f/4 lens is at resolving detail. Enjoy...