A little bit of Photoshop Lightroom 3 goes a long way.

There is no question that I love Photoshop Lightroom 3. There is just so much that you can do to improve your images. I find that I can come close to matching the image I produce with the image that I envisioned at the time I captured it.  I am not one who believes that you need to improve on nature necessarily but lets face it, no film or digital sensor can record what your mind sees when you look at a scene.  Similarly, any woman looks better with just a little make-up.  (Boy, am I in trouble now.)  In Photography, just like with women, the trick is to apply just enough enhancement that it improves the presentation but doesn't become the subject itself.

My case in point is this image of Cedar Breaks National Monument.  Cedar Breaks has got to be one of the most beautiful  locations in Utah if not the world.   Unfortunately, no film or sensor can accurately record the depth of color or the range in exposure that is available in each scene.  The human eye and brain combine to create and image in the mind that is impossible to record on any medium known to photographers.  However, with the use of computers and software, an image can be manipulated until it mimics what is seen in the minds eye.

below is an image that I captured this fall on a visit to Cedar Breaks.  It is not a bad shot but does not approach the vision that I had in my head.



Using Photoshop Lightroom 3, I was able to take this same digital capture, apply a graduated neutral density filter (darkening the sky),  turned up the exposure (lightening the rest of the photo), increased the saturation (deepening the colors) and vignette (darken) the corners a little.   The resulting image below is very close to what I saw, in my mind, when I walked up to the edge of the canyon and took in the beauty that was presented before me.

Making a sunset photograph work

Last night as I was driving home from St. George on I-15, I looked up at Pine Valley Mountain and couldn't believe how beautiful it was. Unfortunately, I was too late to get into position to shoot a good sunset so I resolved to come back tonight and give it a try. It seems that the situation is seldom as good when you go back and set up your camera. The light was fine but the sky just didn't have the drama that it did last night. No clouds at all but I decided to make the best of it anyway.

The first thing that I had to do was to find an interesting location. There were several requirements. It had to offer a good view of the mountain with interesting shadows showing up at sunset. It also had to have an interesting foreground. Since the sky was somewhat lacking in character, I had to make up for it in foreground. Good scenic photographs must have either a great sky or an interesting foreground. The really great ones have both but a good photographer can make a photo by emphasizing one or the other.

When I found a good spot, I arrived early and experimented by taking photos from different vantage points in order to settle on the one that looked to be the most promising.

After settling on a place that seemed like it would work, I set up my tripod and fine tuned the composition. I like to try to make sure that all of the elements work together to create harmony in the frame. Now all that was left to do was wait out the light and take several exposures as the sun set and the shadows lengthened.

As the sun goes down the light takes on an ever-increasing warmth that really enhances the red rock that we have here in southern Utah. In fact it can almost get to be a little overwhelming at times as seen in this photo.

I like to continue shooting even after the sunlight no longer illuminates the foreground. In this particular shoot, my favorite frame was exposed with the sunshine just brushing the mountain in the background.

With a little help from Lightroom, I came up with a shot that will probably spend some time on my wall.

I'll go into some of the technical requirements of this shoot on tomorrow's post. Meanwhile let me know what you think.