Pictures from Palo Duro

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:29 pm

Took my daughter driving down in the canyon this afternoon, and stopped to get some pictures while we were out there...

I've put a few more together in a set that can be found here

Humboldt · Post by **Humboldt** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:52 pm

Oh man, I love that terrain.

Now I'm really jealous

Never really stopped in Texas but lived in AZ for a couple of years and traveled around there and NM and Colorado and Utah a good bit. Excellent country.

Great colors in the rock shots. What time did you take that last one?

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:06 am

Humboldt wrote:Oh man, I love that terrain.

Now I'm really jealous

Never really stopped in Texas but lived in AZ for a couple of years and traveled around there and NM and Colorado and Utah a good bit. Excellent country.

Great colors in the rock shots. What time did you take that last one?

They were all taken between about 4:30 and 5:30, right around that magic hour for sunlight

There's so much down in the canyon that can be had for photographers that it's not even funny. I could probably spend the next two weeks down there and still not get all the shots I'd want. Caves, trails, open terrain, rocky terrain...you name it. It's the Grand Canyon's little brother

Debbie · Post by **Debbie** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:14 am

Indy wrote:

The contrast of the blue of the sky and the red of the stone is unbelievable in this shot!!!

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:42 am

Very vivid colors.

tao_jones · Post by **tao_jones** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:17 pm

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:27 pm

tao_jones wrote:Hdr?

Yep. It's mostly just to bring out the detail that gets lost in the shadows. I don't like going overboard with the HDR processing that you'll see some people do...with my pictures I try to keep it as realistic looking as possible.

The colors there that afternoon had a very golden look to them, as the sun was very close to the horizon when I started shooting these pictures.

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 12:51 am

A couple more shots from this day...

This picture here was taken from the top of the canyon looking down into the canyon floor. The base of the outcrop here is probably a good 600-700 feet below where I'm standing:

Another shot from the top of the canyon, this time trying to get a little fancy with the background blurred:

Despite it being January when I took these pictures, there was still a lot of green vegetation to be had:

Post by **Philip** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:33 pm

Indy wrote:Yep. It's mostly just to bring out the detail that gets lost in the shadows. I don't like going overboard with the HDR processing that you'll see some people do...with my pictures I try to keep it as realistic looking as possible.

The colors there that afternoon had a very golden look to them, as the sun was very close to the horizon when I started shooting these pictures.

What camera do you use ?
Do you use some type of stabilizer/tripod for day shots, if you're doing HDR ?

Those images look amazing, btw.

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:23 pm

Philip wrote:What camera do you use ?
Do you use some type of stabilizer/tripod for day shots, if you're doing HDR ?

Those images look amazing, btw.

I'm using a Sony A100 DSLR. The only type of stabilization that I use is the built in anti-vibration mechanism the camera itself has. I didn't use a tripod the day I went out and took these photos, but one of my future projects is to go out here and take a monster panorama, somewhere on the order of a couple of hundred pictures, for a gigapan type panorama.

As far as the HDR goes, with these pictures it's strictly a single RAW file HDR process. I do 5 exposure edits from the RAW, then combine them back into a single file using Photomatix. It's cheating, technically speaking, but it still results in some pretty nice looking shots, if done right.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:17 pm

Oh, ok, I thought you were doing multiple exposures with different shutter speed.

HDR shouldn't be considered cheating if done conservatively IMHO... It just breaks the large scale tonal hierarchy a bit if I understand it correctly.

I found this interesting for an image stabilizer, even if a bit "ghetto", lol:

[YOUTUBE]Af3aJ2kviJ4[/YOUTUBE]

Indy · Post by **Indy** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:43 pm

Philip wrote:Oh, ok, I thought you were doing multiple exposures with different shutter speed.

HDR shouldn't be considered cheating if done conservatively IMHO... It just breaks the large scale tonal hierarchy a bit if I understand it correctly.

I found this interesting for an image stabilizer, even if a bit "ghetto", lol:

[YOUTUBE]Af3aJ2kviJ4[/YOUTUBE]

That's actually a really good idea...I'll have to run up to the hardware store and grab some of that stuff and make my own ghetto stabilizer