The Dantes View was the first stop in the Death Valley National Park during my drive from Las Vegas to the Eastern Sierra (California).
It takes 20km of an uphill ride to get from the elevation below sea level at the valley all the way to 1700m (5,476 ft). When I entered the national park it was pretty hot and dry, what you normally expect from the desert. And when I stepped out of the car at the Dantes View I did not expect to face a chilly breeze. I dad to dive into the trunk of the car to fish out some warm clothes.
Even in the middle of the day with the harsh afternoon light and empty sky, the view was simply spectacular. The colors, the textures, and the shapes were unforgettable.
Loc: 36.220259, -116.726741
Shooting
The challenge with the shooting was the vastness of the scene. From the moment I saw it I knew that I would have to do some kind of panoramic composition.
I took only two shots because I did not want to go beyond 16×9 aspect ration for the composition.
- Camera: Sony a6000
- Lens: Sony 16-70
- Focal Length: 16mm
- Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F10
- Shutter Speed: 1/640s
- Bracketing: 3 (-1, 0, 1)
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
- Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Editing & Processing
It was the perfect opportunity to test a brand new Boundary Warp feature in Panorama Merge module.
Save
First, I used the Perspective option for the projection to minimize the distortion of the sense. Second, I dragged the Boundary Warp slider all the way to 100% to fill up the canvas.
Lightroom (90%)
I cropped the image to 16×9 aspect ratio (Crop Overlay Tool).
Lightroom Rapid Editing workflow: I used Natural style preset from Landscape Collection in a combination with adjustment presets from TOOLKIT to tweak the image.Lightroom Editing Formula: Natural (2, 8, 12, 17, 22)The last step in Lightroom was to clean up the sky using the Spot Removal tool.
Photoshop (10%)
​In Photoshop, I used the Stamp Tool to clean up the image by removing the distractions in the foreground.
Plugins: DeNoise (noise reduction), Topaz Detail (local contrast boost).
Total Time: 15min
