Was at Desert View, a remote area near the east entrance to Grand Canyon for a few days. Really beautiful area with amazing views of the canyon. You can actually see where the Colorado River widens out to become the Grand Canyon. Got some great shots but now have a problem with my camera. The sensor is dirty. Several streaks of junk run across my images requiring me to do major repair surgery on every one. When I look at the sensor I can see them so they are definitely real. When the final image is composed of upwards of 20 separate HDR images that's a lot of repair work to do. Of course, this happened in a remote area where there aren't any repair shops so I'm stuck until I get back to Albuquerque later this week. I'm going to do some internet searches to see if there's a way I can do it but that's probably risky. I want a clean camera, not a broken or destroyed one.
Desert View and the Grand Canyon
As you head east out of the Grand Canyon on Rt. 64 there's a small outpost called Desert View near the park's entrance. Back in the 20s they erected a tall tower on the canyon's rim so people could climb up and get a major impressive view (not that you need any added incentive to be impressed but what the hell). As is my custom, I wander along the rim, searching out spots where I can get out over the abyss and see as much of the canyon depths as possible. That's why my panoramas are so dramatic. I found several possible spots and shot one each night as the sun went down. Unfortunately, the sunsets were not really all that impressive because a band of clouds always sat stubbornly on the horizon, blocking the sun at just that critical point when the sky should light up in the most spectacular way. Something about the geography and interaction with the prevailing winds seems to cause this problem more often than not. Most of my canyon shots exhibit this issue but what can I do? Don't have a direct line to the weather god so I've got to live with what I'm given.
Anyway, last night I positioned my now crippled camera on a very precarious ledge about 200 yards west of the watch tower and waited. Again there was that pesky band of clouds just at the horizon only this time there was a small crack just wide enough for the sun to shine through. There weren't any impressive displays of fireworks but still a nice, muted show of color. The result is shown below. If you look just to the right of center, you can see the Colorado River as it emerges around the corner from it's deep slot canyon into the Grand Canyon.
 |
| Grand Canyon Sunset at Desert View - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100, license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
5 exposures per position, into Photomatix for merging and a bit of color enhancement, into Photoshop for repair work to fix the dirty sensor streaks and then into Photoshop to create the panorama. Finished off in Lightroom with final color adjustments and some spot removal of shadows caused by dirt on the sensor. Damn ... I hope I can find someone to quickly clean that sensor or it's going to be a long road ahead. Enjoy and let me know your impressions.
No comments:
Post a Comment