After a strenuous previous day and getting to bed late with no firm plans for where to go for early morning photos, I decided to sleep in a bit and scout the area again during the morning and afternoon for possible locations for sunset photos.
After breakfast, I walked the trail to the visitor center looking around for possible photo locations along the way. Since I had hiked a substantial portion of the Guadalupe Peak Trail the previous day, I figured that I had earned the right to purchase and display a pin from the park in my collection, so I picked up the pin and inquired about the road into the Salt Basin, hoping to get time to visit the gypsum sand dunes in the western portion of the park. No one there had any update on the condition of the long clay road into that portion of the park. After thinking about this, I decided against attempting to get into the Salt Basin on this trip. I only had that afternoon and the next morning to spend in the park and the Salt Basin area is a day use area only, meaning no overnight camping or parking there. For sunrise photos, I would have to get up early the next morning and drive quite a way to get to the access road and then there was no way to know if I would be able to drive the last portion of the road and I would have no idea of where to go, anyway. For sunset photos, I ran the risk of losing my already paid for second night in the RV site, where the slots are on a first come basis; but there seemed to be no way to show that a site was already taken, if no vehicle was parked there. This eliminated the gypsum dunes for sunset photos.
Upon returning to my vehicle, I decided to check out the Tejas Trail from which I thought I might be able to get late day shots with golden hour light as I had observed it the previous evening on the mountainside to the east of the trail.
The lower portion of the Tejas Trail is much easier than the Guadalupe Peak Trail. Again I hiked with only my Camelbak with water, snacks, GPS (for safety and for recording waypoints at possible photo sites) and iPhone. I looked for possible photo sites along the trail, making a number of iPhone scouting shots. These shots were all taken around mid-day to early afternoon, so the light was harsh with the sun almost directly overhead, so there were not even any shadows to give the photos depth.
I am presenting a few of those scouting photos in this post with comments regarding the ideas for later DSLR images and some notes on editing photos.
This first image is an example of what is seen much too often and illustrates what one should not do in our national parks. Someone just could not resist defacing one of the trees along the trail.
Even with mid-day light, it is sometimes possible to get interesting images. The one above is a portion of a gnarly, weathered, fallen tree, mostly in the shade of another tree with sunlight dappling across it. This is a jpeg image, so the editing is limited; but I’ve tweaked it a bit in Adobe Lightroom, then applied additional editing in DXO Nik software. I typically like to add several filters in Color Efex Pro 4, depending upon the photo, with a slight touch of brilliance, detail extraction, sometimes a graduated neutral density and a slight skylight filter. One has to be careful not to over do it with these filters. Sometimes, I will note that a favorite filter is just too much and I either have to tone it down or eliminate it.
I hoped to get sunset light on the features in the mountain side, but I also needed something in the foreground and/or framing objects. So I experimented with these concepts as I walked along the trail. I applied a little lens fall off vignetting in the above image to tone down some of the unattractive foreground and to reduce the plain sky.
Another foreground/framing possibility is illustrated here. Again, I used a little lens fall off vignetting to reduce the foreground clutter and to add a focusing effect into the image.
The image above has a vignetting filter, that I do not often use, applied in Nik Color Efex Pro 4. I thought it worth experimenting with in these flat, bland photos. I think this one serves quite well in this case. It tones down the foreground clutter, reduces the plain sky and focuses on the main subject.
I kept hiking along the trail, trying to get closer to this particular feature on the mountainside, hoping to find a good vantage point to photograph it later in the day. Here, again, I’ve added vignetting to reduce the foreground clutter and focus the eye on the main subject.
The boulder in the lower right anchors the foreground in this image and I think with it located diagonally from the peak in the upper left, helps to give this image some depth and visual tension. Vignetting is used again to reduce the unattractive clutter around the edges and guides the eye into the image. The vignette center can be moved and in this case, it has been moved slightly to the left.
This is just an experiment with a monochrome version of the previous image. Sometimes harsh light images can be more appealing images in monochrome. In this case, the lack of shadows results in too flat an image to be interesting.
Just another experimental foreground for the prominent feature in the mountainside. The Cholla is weathered and not very attractive; but there is at least a hint of clouds developing in the sky.
Ah, if I could find this at sunset, I think I would get a good image!
Stay tuned for the late day results,
Ken