Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama

Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama
Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama

Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful dusk clouds against darkening sky above the salt flats of Badwater Basin and the distant ridges of the Amargosa and Panamint mountain ranges.

This was one of the final photographs I made in fading light on this evening. (I made another series a few minutes later when the sky and clouds and salt flats were all various stages of blue – I may ultimately post that image here as well.) The very last light was catching the clouds above Badwater and the central portions of Death Valley, and the color was already fading quickly in the darker area to the east over the Amargosa Range.

As I have mentioned before, the very wide dynamic range between the shaded surface of the salt flats and the bright bit of sunlit cloud and sky at the far left necessitated the use of two exposures which were then combined in post. (Even after this light finally faded I was not yet finished for the day. An hour or so later I was doing night photography under the light of the rising full moon at Zabriskie Point.)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite of two exposures in the 1/2 to 1/4 second range.

keywords: badwater, basin, salt, flat, polygon, pattern, white, texture, panorama, evening, sunset, twilight, dusk, dark, sky, color, orange, pink, blue, amargosa, panamint, mountain, range, ridge, horizon, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, landscape, travel, scenic, nature, stock

5 thoughts on “Dusk Clouds, Badwater Basin Panorama”

  1. Dan-

    You wrote, “(This is not the same as HDR, by the way. You probably know that, but some people confuse the two techniques.)”

    In fact I did not know that…I try not to get too caught up in the PC end of photography, so my understanding is a bit limited…I think it has something to do with staring at a PC all day at work…I’d rather not have to deal with PCs again when I practice my photography…which is my escape from modern, hi-tech life!

    At least in my mind I think of the term “HDR” where multiple exposures are deliberately taken above and below the “perfect exposure” in order to capture details in the highlight and shadow regions of the image which would be normally be lost if only one exposure were taken. Then through post-processing the “good parts” of each exposure are combined to get a “perfectly exposed” image. HDR may be totally automated by software, and blending the photographer is making the judgments.

    Correct me if the above is off the mark (it probably is). In the past when I’ve made large prints, I’ve directed others to do the computer work for me, thus sparing time sitting in front of a PC! (Although I’ve looked over their shoulders and told them what needs to be corrected.)

  2. Greg, it was shot at 17mm. I most often shoot at the very wide angle end on the salt flats, especially when their are clouds like those I saw on this evening.

    You are correct that I don’t use ND grad filters, preferring instead to go the blended exposure route. (This is not the same as HDR, by the way. You probably know that, but some people confuse the two techniques.) A GND filter would have worked well for this particular shot given the horizontal and linear division between the salt flats and the mountains and sky – though there could have been a bit of difficulty with the mountains being darker than necessary.

    If I were shooting film I would probably use GND filters, but there are several reasons that I don’t use them these days:

    • They add one more thing to carry and fiddle with. I’d certainly put up with that if I had no alternatives, but these days I do have alternatives.
    • Blending exposures provides a great deal more power, control and flexibility. For example, if the boundary between the dark/light areas is not linear it is possible to follow any boundary imaginable in post. (For an example, imagine the backlit mouth of a v-shaped canyon, shot from inside the canyon, with very bright subjects beyond – here the boundary might be v-shaped.)
    • With blending you can have essentially any exposure relationship between the light/dark areas, not just the 2-stop or 3-stop margins that the filters typically provide.
    • You can do what I might call a partial blend where rather than substituting one image for the other you simply introduce a little of the second image – think of adding just a touch of detail to a dark shaded area by creating a custom mask with, for example, 25% opacity in this area.
    • You can use more than two exposures in extreme situations. I’ve had to occasionally use as many as three!

    I think I wrote elsewhere about the “natural” effect you mention. (Thanks for saying that, by the way!) The trick is to come up with a balance that corresponds to what we believe we saw (or would see) at the location where the photograph was made. Our eyes see much differently than the camera does. For example, we can accommodate a much wider dynamic range – as we look around a scene our pupils dilate differently for the subject we look at. Our brains also do some subjective color correction. If you take out a white piece of paper on the salt flats your brain tells you it is white… but a photograph at this late time of day would show it as being quite blue. So in order to create a version of the scene that corresponds to what we think is real – or, as I like to say, is believable – we have to adjust things. Here, the lightness of the salt flat was increased, largely by using a longer exposure blended with the one-stop shorter exposure for the sky.

    Dan

  3. Dan-

    Wonderful photo. It makes me wish I were there!

    Was this shot at around 17mm? I wonder because of the perspective of the salt fields in the foreground…I really like it.

    In looking at this photo it looks so natural, I would have not suspected it was post processed a bit.

    (As a sidebar comment, I know there is some disdain in photography circles of using HDR. Personally I don’t have any problems with it, as long as when I look at the image, I don’t have an immediate thought, “Gee, that lighting doesn’t look natural.” There are some new, highly-acclaimed nature photographers to the scene (I won’t mention names) that are taking some heat lately for post-processing images, and whose images are fantastic, but whose lighting is totally unnatural (IMHO)).

    Your image would look wonderful enlarged to a large size, and hung on a wall!

    Let me ask you: you combined images to get this shot…any reason for not using GNDs? A hard-edged GND would seem to work well for this shot as well?

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