Postcard from the Arches–Turret Arch

 

I am back in Tucson after a nearly week-long photo expedition to the Moab, Utah area. With this comfortable little city as our base, my friend and fellow photographer Dave Forester and I traveled to both the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Both of us have been this area before, but it is always great to come back here for the beauty and to capture specific images that we did not get before.

We did the greatest portion of our shooting at sunrise and sunset, the so-called “Golden Hours” of photography. On some days, the light didn’t work out…on others, it happened exactly as hoped. So, all-in-all it was a successful trip. And you will be seeing some of the results here.

One of the things I wanted to experiment with was HDR photography, which stands for High Dynamic Range. This is a relative new area of photography, made possible by special software and multiple exposure shots. 

To be more specific, HDR is the post-processing of a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single shot. To accomplish the photography part, you take anyway from 3 to 5 exposures of the same scene at the same time, each one at a different exposure. In my case, I shot 3 quick exposures…one +1 stop, one at –1 stop and one at the normal exposure. I let the camera’s on-board light meter determine the exact exposure.

This is Turret Arch at sunrise, right after the sun’s rays first fell on the arch. Again, I combined all three exposures to come up with this photo…and in comparing it to a perfectly exposed single shot, this is a much better image. The big difference is that a one shot photo could not capture the brightness of the sky with so much of the ground in shadows. The ground would be way too dark or the sky way too bright.

It is close to what I saw with my eyes that morning…remember a single digital photo only can capture an image with a variance of 3-4 stops…while the human eye has a range of 10 stops.  That is quite a difference. HDR photography allows one to make an image close to what the eye sees.

There will be more HDR photos coming your way soon, so stay tuned.