Tag Archives: 9

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Canyon and Forest

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Sandstone Canyon and Forest - A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah
A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah

Sandstone Canyon and Forest. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A winding sandstone canyon willed with trees, Zion National Park, Utah.

This photograph was definitely not shot in “golden hour” light! Although it was afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky, and that sky was a somewhat unattractive washed out light blue color. In order to not allow that quality to take over the image, I composed this scene to completely exclude sky and also to minimize the inclusion of more distant features that would show the effect of the haze. I did include a bit of it at the upper right, since that serves to give the image some amount of depth.

The area is in the “high country” of Zion National Park along the Mt. Carmel highway. This road passes to the east across and then out of the park, climbing (through an exciting but, in some ways, unfortunate tunnel in the sandstone) out of the Virgin River area of the main Zion Canyon to pass through the dome-filled, river cut highlands. I shot toward the sun here, to be able to include the beautiful shaded cliff walls, and I tried to find a composition that would show the twisting course of the creek that winds down this canyon.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Pines and Sandstone

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Pines and Sandstone - Sunlit pine trees against shaded sandstone, Zion National Park, Utah
Sunlit pine trees against shaded sandstone, Zion National Park, Utah

Pines and Sandstone. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunlit pine trees against shaded sandstone, Zion National Park, Utah.

This was probably one of my first photographs on my recent trip to Zion National Park (and other Utah locations) in early April. After arriving in the general area of the park in the middle of the afternoon, we decided that we should see the “high country” along the Mt. Carmel Highway that heads up and east from the main Zion Canyon and Virgin River area. While almost everything in Zion is fascinating, I find this higher elevation terrain especially intriguing – with its combination of swirling and curving sandstone shapes, carved waterways, and various kinds of vegetation. At first it was hard for me to understand how I might photograph this country, but the more I looked the more I at least started to “see” it.

Of course, I like to photograph trees like these anywhere! Although when I stopped I first photographed some sandstone formations to the left of these trees, I had noticed the trees and thought about the possibility of shooting them with this backlight against the shaded sandstone cliffs, with their red tones altered a bit by the reflected blue light from the open sky.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Equipment, Technique

Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Two More Reasons to Love Live View

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Yesterday I was at Point Lobos shooting a variety of wildlife, nature, and landscape subject. As I worked I found myself using the live view feature of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II very frequently – partly for reasons I’ve written about before, but largely for two reasons that I’d like to briefly mention.

Much better depth of field preview – Everyone knows about the small depth of field preview button on the body near the lens. Since the lens is open to the widest aperture when you focus you cannot tell what your depth of field will be until you push this button to stop down to the aperture that you’ll use for your shot. There are two problems with this technique: you cannot judge sharpness critically enough across the frame in the viewfinder and the viewfinder becomes incredibly dim if you stop down to small apertures like f/16. Put those two problems together and the usefulness of the preview button is diminished. However, when you use live view the camera automatically adjusts when you press the preview button and the image is still plenty bright to see on the LCD. Even better, you can zoom in to 5x or 10x magnification to carefully check sharpness. All in all, this makes DOF preview a much more useful feature when live view is used.

You can compose a photograph when using neutral density filters to extend exposure – At one point this weekend I was using a 9-stop neutral density filter to make exposures of the surf with durations in the 10-20 second range. My usual practice is to compose the shot and, if necessary, manually focus without the filter attached. Once the shot is set up I attach the filter. Unfortunately, the filter renders the scene virtually invisible through the viewfinder. Recomposing or manually focusing requires removing the filter, making adjustments, and then reattaching the filter. I discovered yesterday that live view mode can display the image in the LCD even with my 9-stop ND filter in place, allowing me to make changes to the composition/framing or adjust focus without removing the filter

(Shortly after posting this I got a message from B&H photo saying that they again have the Canon EOS 5D Mark II back in stock, and unlike some other dealers they sell it with no markups at the list price of $2669.95.)