Antelope Canyon

The sparse offerings...

I do have to apologize for the sparse offerings of late on this blog. I know I promised a photo a day but it's just been too hard to get my head into working on the computer of late. I've not been all that well and the wife has also had some very serious health issues that put her in the hospital for several weeks last month. Not exactly life threatening but damn close. Appears she had a minor stroke or a major epileptic seizure early last month and that left her with some paralysis in her right hand and overall weakness. She's now on some really awful drugs to help with the seizures and to hopefully return some function and energy but they leave her sick and weak. It's been a nasty adventure this last month and I just didn't have the inclination to sit at my computer in the hot sun and try to write blog posts. The weather has turned now so maybe I can be a bit more diligent. I'll be better ... I promise.

Antelope Canyon

The slot canyons on Navajo land near Page, AZ are a must for any serious photographer. They are gorgeous and very interesting. Carved by raging storm waters they have such amazing shapes and colors due to the layered sandstone that is everywhere in that part of the country. As they are on indian land there's a high fee to pay and you must take one of the guided tours so it's really hard to get good photos. They do offer photographer's tours but they happen at the same time as the other tours so you're always fighting the crowds to get good shots. And the special tours are very expensive ... $85 bucks for 2 hours. Maybe next year I'll opt for one of those. I took an early morning tour before the bright sun could penetrate the canyons so there was less light and many of my longer exposures (hand held) were blurred so I didn't get much to work with. But this shot came out very nice. It's HDR to get all the colors and tones. Taken with my new 6D and my 16-35 f/4 wide angle lens. Not a show stopper but nice none the less.

Antelope Canyon - 35mm,f/4,HDR,ISO 800,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Horseshoe Bend Redux

The Russian Airliner...

The news today indicates it's highly likely the Russian Airbus A321 was brought down by a bomb planted in the cargo hold. I guess this isn't really a surprise. After Russia came in to help defend Assad it was only a matter of time until someone found a way to take revenge. The Arabs are nothing if not persistent ... especially the fanatics. I'm curious how president Putin will react. This is one of those times when he has very little choice. He can't admit he made a mistake and pull out. He really can only double down and keep bombing ... this time seriously targeting ISIS and their associated groups. He's walked into a quagmire (as did our president Obama) and now he's stuck. Funny how sometimes the enemy becomes your friend ... as now we see Lavrov and Kerry surgically attached at the hip and walking the same path together. Ukraine is forgotten as it probably should have been long ago. It was and is a mess with no easy solution. So now the US and Russia face a common enemy and an equally messy and dangerous path to vanquish this foe. It should get interesting as we go forward.

Horseshoe Bend Redux

Was going through my photos from the first cycle and came across the images from Horseshoe Bend in northern Arizona. This was one of my first panoramas and, although amazing, it was not the best work. Some of the colors were over saturated and there was distortion around the center feature. Not sure where that came from but it really damaged the overall image. I also did extensive work in Photoshop and I probably overdid some colors. So, I redid everything, using the techniques I mastered later in the trip. Went back into Photomatix and found a better set of adjustments and then, avoiding Photoshop except for stitching together the pano, I used Lightroom to find the proper color balance. I've gotten comfortable using the color adjustment tools and don't push the saturation nearly as much. I also let the depths remain somewhat dark although I did lighten things just a bit. This gives the image greater depth (almost 3D) and mystery which is something the canyon has in spades. I enjoyed my time in Page so much I may add this area to my second cycle, around the same time as this image was taken (mid-April). That was a nice time ... not too hot and not too cold. We'll see.

Horseshoe Bend - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/14,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

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...

Horseshoe Bend

The Selfie Craze

Stood on the edge of Horseshoe Bend in Page, AZ and peered down into the abyss. It was a long way down and sudden death if one stepped too close. I'm told no one has fallen yet (hard to believe) but that day inevitable due to a new craze that's sweeping the world ... the selfie stick. For those of you who've been living in a cave for the last couple of years, a selfie stick allows you to mount your camera (usually a cell phone but now even large tablets) on a long stick and to take a picture of yourself without assistance. Just hold the pole in one hand and smile. Nice idea for the terminally self-absorbed but potentially fatal in a place like Horseshoe Bend. I was talking to Kevin Burk, a pro photographer from LA, a few days ago and he pointed this out to me. He'd watched several Chinese tourists, with their selfie sticks fully extended, edging ever closer to the canyon edge in pursuit of the perfect picture ... their ugly mugs dead center in the Colorado River. I saw the same thing when I was there but didn't make the connection. They were so intent on getting that picture that they didn't even know where the edge was. Just looking at the cell phone and getting ever closer to the edge ... and the first fatality at Horseshoe Bend ... ?

Horseshoe Bend

I wandered up and down the path leading to the bend several times, lugging all my gear. Didn't exactly know what to expect but, when I finally arrived, the panorama is breathtaking. You stand on the edge, without protection, and look into this deep river valley. Wondered how many people had fallen. I took a few test photos and went back to my truck to prepare. I wanted to be on the edge as the sun set. Unfortunately, there were few clouds in the sky so the best I could hope for was sky glow. Even that would give me an interesting image for sure. Spent a while getting my generator running (I'd left Albuquerque with it still unchecked) and setting up my nodal slide. There's a unique rotation point for your lens (and for each zoom setting) where parallax just cancels out. If you're interested, check out the many videos that show how to find the nodal point for your lens on YouTube.

Anyway, the time finally came and I once again trudged up and down the hill until I stood at the edge. As is often the case, all the tourists had fled and only the diehard remained. I found a great place for my setup and waited. I'd decided to do an HDR panograph as this is really the only way to capture both the grandeur and amazing depth of color that emerges as the sun rises.

The Bend at Sunset - 16mm (1.6 crop), f/18, varying exposure, ISO 100 license CC BY-NC 4.0

Click on the image to get a larger view. Processing was a challenge. I'd let the camera decide on exposure levels because the light varied so much from one angle to the next. I took two rows of images, one down in the canyon and another capturing the sky. I took a representative set of images into Photomatix and made my adjustments until I had a reasonable result. One has to be careful not to overdo the sliders as you can get a very freaky result. Then I batch processed all the images using the settings from my test run. I've been testing both Photoshop and Hugin (an open source pano stitcher) and have, for the most part, settled on Photoshop. Hugin does weird things with your images and I'm just not comfortable relying on it yet. Photoshop does a great job with pano stitching. I use the cylindrical setting and check all the boxes (vignette and distortion correction) and then sit back to see what it does. Now, the problem comes when the dynamic range of the images gets too extreme. Photoshop adjusts exposure levels on the images until you get seamless integration. In the case of this image, the far reaches of the canyon were in deep shadow and basically disappeared in the initial run. I tried several approaches to fix the problem but nothing worked. Simply lightening the recesses produced a very flat, lifeless image that I found unsatisfying. I put the image aside for a few days and let my subconscious think ponder on the problem. I've found over the years that it is much smarter than the rest of my brain. Finally, after a few days, the solution appeared. I took the brightest images from the brackets and made another pano from them ... with the exact same settings. What emerged was a very bright image with the shadows now visible and useable. I carefully overlay this on the main pano (on a separate layer) and then created a luminosity mask that selected shadows so I only worked in the the darker parts and had automatic feathering on the edges. With a feathered brush I worked the shadows, letting the brightest layer come through. I made several other minor adjustments including enhancing the greens along the river and the result is shown above. It's dark and ominous but that's the effect I wanted. I've seen so many images of this landscape where the photographer has worked to bring out the bright colors and it looks fake (but does wonders on the tourist brochures). That's not what you see at sunset. You see a bright sky and the canyon in shadow. So, what you see in this image is what it looks like as you stare into the canyon (at least to my eye).