This picture was taken on my trip last month into the Arches National Park. It shows a very small part of the Fiery Furnace section of the park, set against the LaSalle Mountains. For two days, we were very fortunate to have a haze-free unobstructed view of the mountains…not always possible.
The Fiery Furnace is a large series of small canyons, many of them dead-ends, set inside many, many fins. Inside you will find both small and large arches. It is highly recommended for newbies that you take a ranger-led tour inside the furnace. Having done that, I will tell you it is the only way to go. It would be so easy to get lost in there. If I went back in, I would still only go with a ranger. Its an arduous hike through there, and some time I will tell you about my experiences, but what is inside the furnace is well worth the hike. By the way, on a hot summer day, it’s the coolest place in the park, in spite of its name.
For this photograph, I again experimented with HDR photography, using 5 separate photos to come up with a composite photo that shows the best exposure values for each part of the photo. Only this time, I didn’t shoot 5 exposures on site…I only shot one. In Photoshop, I created 5 separate images using a full one stop value for each. In other words the exposures went from –2 to +2, with the original photo as the 0 point. Then using a program called Photomatix, I combined all five into one shot.
Of course, the final image had to be tweaked again in Photoshop as they never come out of Photomatix perfectly. I like some of the things I can do with HDR and will be experimenting with it more in the future. Stay tuned for more in the future.
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