Tag: sunset

Canyonlands Sunset

Posted on by Nick Roberts

I was riding in Canyonlands National Park in Utah a couple of years ago when I came upon this scene. I had been down this road earlier in the day and was returning to my hotel when I came around a bend in the road and saw this vista. I immediately knew I wanted to capture the vista that was before me.

I had already met the Park Ranger back at the end of the road and knew that I was the only person on the road as the sun was going down behind me. I decided to ease my bike off the shoulder of the road  but when I put my front wheel onto what looked like a solid sand flat spot it tipped over instantly. I wasn’t going fast so I wasn’t hurt at all but I was still concerned. You see a Harley-Davidson Roadglide weighs nearly 900 pounds and there was nobody there to help me get it back up on it’s wheels. I learned long ago how to use leverage to right a motorcycle but even at that I knew I was in a pickle. I had to unload all my luggage, remove the saddlebag that I could reach, take off my rear Tour Pak and then dig the sand out under the bike’s wheels with my hands before I could lift it up and get it back onto the blacktop.

By that time I was exhausted and the sun was rapidly setting. I had used up almost 30 minutes and was concerned about riding alone in the dark as I exited the park. Once I had the bike back on the road; I still had to reinstall everything I had taken off before I could get going again. I finished that and then I saw that the original shot I had stopped to take had morphed into this gorgeous scene.

To this day I think the gods of photography tipped that motorcycle over so that I would be there to shoot this image.

Yum Center Louisville, KY

Posted on by Nick Roberts

This shot is a true HDR image merged from 5 separate exposures. I use the EV (exposure value) control to change my exposures. I find that these late sunset images work really well when I expose at +2, +1, 0, -1, -2 EV. Doing this gets detail into the shadow areas via the overexposed frames and prevents blowing out the highlights by underexposing the two minus (-) EV frames while the 0 exposure gives good mid-tone information. I took these images straight from Aperture 3 into NIK HDR Efex Pro to tone map the image then returned the tone mapped image to Aperture 3 where I cleaned up the sensor dust spots, boy do I hate dust spots, and gave it some sharpening to wrap it up.

I shot this from the Clark Memorial Bridge with my Nikon D90 set at 200 ISO and f11 using my Nikkor 12-24 mm wide angle lens. Another thing to keep in mind is to always use a tripod and cable release when shooting multiple images for HDR processing.

I was trying to balance the building with the sky to create a balanced image that would give a sense of depth to the scene. I also chose to include a small amount of the bridge railing in the frame to add some foreground interest and added texture to the composition.