SFredrickPhoto.com Blog

In an earlier post I showed one of my favorite images from my recent trip to Death Valley. I thought I would start a series where I shared some images from each day and gave a bit of back story for each image.

We flew into Las Vagas, picked up a high clearance vehicle, and drove to Death Valley. I had not been to DV before but I had done quite a bit of research and had a list of places I wanted to visit at what time of day. Its only a 2-2 ¹/₂ hour drive. I had hoped to get to Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes in the Stovepipe Well area for sunset. I made the mistake of trusting the gps and it took us to the East Entrance. As we drove into the park it became obvious that we were not going to make Mesquite Flats by sunset. So we stopped and started shooting. As you can see the light was phenomenal.  The setting sun had a very warm color to it and the low angle of light accentuated the textures in both the background mountains and the foreground gravel.

For this image I used a technique that I like for wide scenics, the use of a foreground anchor. In this case the anchor does not play a large roll in the composition because there is no color contrast between it and the other elements in the fore and middle ground. I chose a medium height for the camera position so there would be some middle ground but not too much and so the cactus and brush in the middle ground did not merge with the mountains in the background.

The shooting meta data for this image is as follows:

D200 with 12-24mm at 14mm
1/60 sec @ f4.5 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +1/3

Within 5 minutes (time between these two shots)  the sun was dropping behind the mountains to our west putting the fore and middle ground in shadow. I used a similar technique for this image as the previous one. But this time I wanted the cotton tail cactus in the foreground to play a larger roll. In ACR I used the adjustment brush to make it look like some on the warm light from the setting sun was hitting them this makes them stand out from the rest of the foreground elements.

The shooting meta data for this image is the same as the previous one:

D200 with 12-24mm at 14mm
1/60 sec @ f4.5 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +1/3

Shortly after this image was taken every thing was pretty much in shadow. Even though I was happy with the images that I was able to make I was disappointed that the afternoon/evening shoot was over. So back in the car and off we go. So it’s time to look for a room. However, within a very short time we came to a sign for Zebriskie Point. I recognized the name because it was on my list for both sunrise and sunset. So we pulled in to check it out.

By the time we got our gear out and walked up the “hill” to Zebriskie Point the sun was already behind the mountains. But the sky!!!!! This is a blind of a Tone Compressed HDR and one of the images from the bracket sequence. I chose this composition because the foreground rock was smooth while the hills in the middle ground had a lot of texture. I thought that this difference in texture would help give the image some depth, with distinct foreground, middle ground, and the sky in the background.

The shooting meta data for this image is as follows:

D200 with 12-24mm at 22mm
3, 1.5 and .6 sec @ f7.1 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +2/3