When I was organizing my third trip to the Southwest, I was extremely thorough. I planned nearly all the sunrises, sunsets and everything in between. But, the Goosenecks State Park in Utah was an unplanned and unexpected golden nugget that I only stumbled upon by accident.
I was on my way from spending a few hours capturing the sunrise at Valley of the Gods to the focal point of the day – Monument Valley. When I saw a road sign for Goosenecks State Park, I was not able to Google it since I did not have internet in the area. Luckily, I decided to explore it anyway.
That was a decision I do not regret.
The view of the San Juan River from an elevation of 300m is surreal because of its enormous scale. It was a clear day and I could see the mesas and buttes of Monument Valley on the horizon.
Shooting
Although the day was beautiful, shooting was a challenge. The edge of the canyon obstructed the view of the river and there was no way to climb down for a better perspective. The featured photo is the best shot I managed to take, but the river is still partially blocked.
- Camera: Sony a6000
- Lens: Sony 10-18
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F10
- Shutter Speed: 1/250s
- Bracketing: 3 (-1, 0, 1)
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 – Check my FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 Review
- Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing
It was a straight forward Lightroom Rapid Editing workflow. I used a single RAW file.
First I cropped the image a bit tighter and changed the aspect ratio from 3×2 to 4×3 aspect ratio.
Next, I used Lightroom Rapid Editing, applying Point Lobos from Landscape Collection style preset first and when I was happy with the final look used the adjustments presets from TOOLKIT collection to fine tune the image.
Lightroom Editing Formula: Point Lobos (17, 21, 32, 34)
At the very end, I jumped to Photoshop and used Topaz plugins DeNoise and Detail to boost the local contrast and to reduce digital noise.