It was my first visit to the Valley of the Gods in Utah.
That day I woke up around sunrise in Flagstaff and drive for 3 hours to Canyon de Chelly.
The Canyon de Chelly is where I spend a good part of the day. I even had the opportunity to hike all the way down to the bottom of the canyon.
And before finishing the day in Mexican Hut, a small town in Utah, I had about an hour to explore the Valley of the Gods.
This is the view I witnessed.
I was so impressed with the location that I changed my plans and visited it again the next day around sunrise.
Loc: 37.275492, -109.864443
Shooting
I did not have much time before it was too dark. I kept my tripod unfolded in the trunk of the car. I was stopping every few hundred meters taking a couple of bracketed shots and moving on to the next spot.
Camera: Sony a6000
Lens: Sony-16-70
Focal Length: 22mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
ISO: 100
Aperture: F10
Shutter Speed: 1/60s
Bracketing: 3 (-1, 0, 1)
Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 – Check my FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 Review.
Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing
Even I was shooting directly into the sun, I was managed to edit this photo as a single RAW file.
This is the first shot I edited using my new Lightroom Rapid Editing PLUS.
I used the Broken Clouds preset from my Landscape Collection first.
Next, I dialed down the opacity to 70%.
Finally, I used TOOLKIT to boost contrast and clarity.
The Lightroom Editing Formula: Broken Clouds 70% (13, 17, 19)
The final touch was to add the Radial Filter with the Orange color overlay to emphasize the colors of the sunset.
I used the following settings:
Photoshop: color correction, contrast, cleaning.
Photoshop Plugins:
- Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise.
