This was the end of the very eventful day during my trip to Arizona and Utah.
Earlier that day I woke up in Grand Canyon Village and, after a short-stroke along the rim of the Grand Canyon, I drove north towards Page and Lake Powell. Due to the landslide, route 89 was closed and I had to change my itinerary and take an alternate, unplanned route towards the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Unplanned and accidental drives became the highlights of my entire trip. First I drove along the beautiful Echo Cliffs; then, I spent at least an hour on the Navajo Bridge enjoying the view of Marble Canyon with the huge condors flying overhead. Alter I crossed the Colorado River I drove through the beautiful valley along the Vermilion Cliffs.
I took this picture just before leaving the Vermilion Cliffs valley and driving towards Grand Canyon North Rim.
Loc: 36.726388, -112.058020
Deconstructing Featured Photo
Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Sigma 17-70mm
Focal Length: 28mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F8
Bracketing: 3 shots ( -1, 0, +1 )
Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 – Check my FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 Review. Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing: HDR Processed in Photomatix
Lightroom: import, tagging, export to Photomatix
Photomatix: I used 3 images to tone map image ( -1, 0, +1 ), 16-bit tiff image was exported to Lightroom. (Tutorial: Complete HDR Workflow)
Lightroom: straightening, cropping, export as PSD image
Photoshop: cleaning, I also replaced the sky. Normally, I try not to modify photos so drastically but in this case I could not resist. The scenery was so beautiful that flat, boring sky looked out of place. I used sky from another photo I took on the following day in Utah.
Photoshop Plugins:
- Perfect Effects 9 – I used 2 filters: Color Enhancer and Dynamic Contrast to boost details and colors in the mountains.
- Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise
