High Dynamic Range Digital Photographs: Natural Bridge National Park, Utah

It’s time to leave Blanding and head west through Southern Utah. Our first stop will be “Natural Bridge National Park“. Natural Bridge is a very unique landscape. It is rugged and unforgiving. It consists of 3 different natural bridges carved from sandstone. If you want a close up view you’ll need to do some hiking. Experiencing 100 degee weather, we chose not to view the first two bridges close up. The third bridge, “Kachina” is only about a half mile hike and we dicided it was worth the effort.

I decided to take a different approach to photographing this environment and took a more abstract view of this unusual landscape. This is a shot of the first bridge, “Owachomo”. I took this photograph from the upper view point. I decided to focus on the unusual lines and texture of the sandstone as apposed to taking a documentary style shot of the bridge itself.

This second photograph is of the third bridge “Kachina”. Again I opted to do something a little unusual and made a somewhat abstract High Dynamic Range Image. I actually processed this photograph using Photomatix and the tone mapping detail enhancer. I then ran it a second time, through the same process, which multiplied the effect, giving it it’s abstract appearance. Like it or love it, it is different and has somewhat of a painterly feel to it.

From here we headed through what I like to call “NO MANS LAND” on our way to our next nights stop in Hanksville Utah. On the way we stopped to take a few more shots of this incredible landscape. Seeing this country from a motor cycle is an awesome experience. I would recommend traveling this country to anyone who is interested in digital photography. It is diverse and breathtaking. I found myself wanting to stop and take photographs constantly, but couldn’t because of the lack of safe turnouts and parking.

I recently had a discussion about shooting for High Dynamic Range photographs and was asked, “Do you need to take HDR in the early morning and late afternoon light?” These HDR images were taken at mid day in 100 degree weather. I’ll let the photographs speak for themselves and you can be the judge.

The first image, in this series of High Dynamic Range Images, is a great example of this rugged landscape. I originally shot this photograph as a panoramic but decided to crop to this format to put more emphasis on the depth and texture of the canyon.

This image was taken after taking just a couple of steps to my right. After 30 years as a Professional Photographer I’m still amazed by the different composition, that can be created, by slightly changing your camera angle.

Here is another example of the variety of photographs that can be taken by simply changing the focal length of your lens or camera angle.

That’s it for this post. Tomorrow we head back to Nevada to explore some photography opportunities in Eureka. I invite you to comment on my posts and share your thoughts.

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