This is a series of blog posts where I recap my latest photography trip to American Southwest.
- Intro - American Southwest Photography Trip Recap
- Day 1 - Packing Fast and Light (Look inside of my camera bag)
- Day 2 - Conquering Angels Landing in Zion National Park
- Day 3 - Extreme Weather in Bryce Canyon
- Day 4 - U.S. Route 89 Loop
Angels Landing
My second day of the trip was entirely dedicated to an exploration of Zion National Park.
The highlight of the day was hiking all the way to the top of the famous Angels Landing trail.
I have visited Zion previously, knew what to expect and had all the facts about the trail.
Distance: 5-miles
Average Hiking Time: 5 hours
Difficulty: Strenuous uphill hike.
Sun Exposure: Full sun
Trail Usage: Heavy
Since the average person does not hike with a tripod and does not stop every 100 meters to take photos, I estimated the average travel photographer hiking time to somewhere between 7 to 8 hours.
I also knew that late morning and early afternoon hours in Zion could be very crowded and, in general, I am not very fond of people in my landscapes. Instead of unapologetically removing them from my reality in Photoshop, I decided to beat the crowd and start the hike as early as possible.
I was on the very first park’s shuttle bus in the early morning as I started my hike in a very comfortable cool temperature with absolutely no people around.

Utah. Zion National Park. Angels Landing Trail
Loc: 37.265410, -112.950776
In the beginning, it was a steep but very comfortable hike, with amazing open views and plenty of room to setup a tripod.
The last half mile of the Angels Landing hike became a bit extreme. I had to pack my tripod and climb with the camera hung around my neck. That was the moment when I really appreciated the switch from DSLR to mirrorless.
For some reason, the hiking down was less uncomfortable than going up.
Shooting
Once again, after analyzing the scene I could see the very bright area of the sky and the deep shadows at the bottom of the canyon. To shoot for HDR was the obvious choice.
I took 3 bracketed shots (-1, 0, +1) on a tripod.
Processing
I keep experimenting with Lightroom 6 new feature – HDR Merge. I like that Lightroom produces HDR file in DNG format which is relatively small. I also appreciate that Lightroom adds “HDR” to the name of newly created DNG file.
I merged 3 bracketed RAW images to HDR using Lightroom 6.
For the processing, I used a Lightroom preset based workflow, using Point Lobos present from my Landscapes Collection (you can always download free lightroom presets here).
Deconstructing Featured Photo
Camera: Sony a6000
Lens: Sony 10-18
Focal Length: 10mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F7.1
Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 – Check my FEISOL Tournament CT-3442 Review.
Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing: Lightroom HDR Preset Based Workflow
Lightroom: import, tagging, HDR Merge, preset based processing (Point Lobos preset from Landscape Collection)
Photoshop: contrast, color correction, cleaning.
Photoshop Plugins:
- Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise (sky). (Check my Topaz DeNoise Product Review).
- Topaz Clarity was used to enhance details and boost colors (rocks mostly).
Awesome as always. It seems to do a very nice job the new hdr plugin in LR6! Till now I haven’t tried yet to do hdr shoots since I have no tripod and no auto bracketing on my d3200, but I’ll try it however with manual bracketing and post processing align, soon. Thanks Viktor for sharing all this beauty!
Just one technical question: where in this image did you place the focus point?
Roby, it was easy shot from the focusing perspective. I was shooting at 10mm and aperture F/7.1 so DOF (depth of field) was from 0.5m to infinity. I did not even bother to use manual focus, AF was good enough.
So it’s not that true what the web talks about 1/3 focusing rule on landscapes? I’m asking this to you because I’ve found that following that rule with my D3200 plus 18-55 lens has always resulted in a slightly blurry background even with small apertures like f/11 or f/16 and even following hyperfocal distance rule, whilst focusing on distant objects in the background always give me sharper photos from the foreground to the background.
Cheers
Roby,
when I use manual focus and I do not have a specific object to focus on (wide landscapes for example) I always use 1/3 rule. It works. And if you use such a small aperture (f/16) auto focus works pretty much always.
Ok thank you so much Viktor for the suggestion, I’ll try to do some focusing practice again!
Are you sure your D3200 does not have bracketing features? It is very surprising.
Yes Viktor the bracketing feature is present starting from D5xxx series.
wow the photographs look incredible. It must be amazing to have seen this in real 🙂
It’s so Amazing photo & nice view