I am feeling the effects of insufficient sleep, after yesterday’s early and late day shoots with an extended hike sandwiched into the mid day hours, followed by today’s early morning sunrise shoot. I try to nap for awhile, after Daniel’s departure, but a strong wind discourages sleep. Looking out the Penthouse window, I see dark clouds to the west. Fearing a rain will turn the clay surface parking lot into a muddy mess, I put the Sportsmobile top down and drive to a less clayey area near the parking area entrance, from which I can quickly exit the parking area in case of a downpour. I see rain falling in the distance in several directions. Walking up a hill to get a cell signal, I check the weather report, which does not mention rain at the two closest weather stations available. I then check the weather forecast for my specific location via my GPS unit, which shows only 10% probability of rain in the area.
After lunch, the weather and clouds approaching from the west do not look as threatening, so I drive back to my favored parking spot, adjacent to the barbed wire fence at the boundary of the Bisti Wilderness area.
I am hesitant go out at sunset, seeing heavy clouds covering the western horizon and a half dozen distant rain showers in various directions. I decide to go anyway, hoping to get some good sunset light and not get rained on.
I target the plateau area again, thinking that sunset light will be good there. Arriving early enough prior to sunset to wander around looking for interesting subjects, I make a few images in the late day light before choosing sunset compositions.
I find this interestingly shaped, small, natural bridge, casting a long shadow, among the many rock features in the wash area adjacent to the plateau.
A number of these images are created via a technique called focus stacking, in which a number of images, focused at different distances from the camera, are combined into one image, creating better sharpness throughout the image. I tend to acquire more images than necessary for this method, but better too many than not enough. I’ve given up on using Photoshop for focus stacking, since the Photoshop processing is slow and not accurate. I’m testing Helicon software for this and I’m impressed with its speed, accuracy and editing feature.
The late day light is good, but I am concerned about the clouds low on the western horizon. I get lucky as the sun drops below the cloud cover just before setting, briefly providing warm light.
I make a number of images of this composition as the sunset light, limited by cloud cover and shadows, moves down the rock features.
And finally, I take a few shots of the sunset with rock features in the foreground.
These last two are HDR images, created from multiple exposures, using DxO Nik HDR Pro. Such processing is required, when shooting a scene with strong light contrast, since camera sensors do not have a sufficiently wide dynamic range to capture the entire light range in one exposure.
I hope you enjoy this post. Click on the photographs to view higher resolution images on my Flickr page.
Until next time,
Ken
I have never used focus stacking, but I have heard others recommend Helicon Focus.
Shutterpug, after much effort in Photoshop only to see many glitches and misaligned images, I did some research and saw that Helicon was one of the highest rated packages for focus stacking. So I used a trial version on many images and I really like it. I have not purchased a copy, yet, but I will before I try do more focus stacking.