One more series from last month’s shoot in Phoenix, Arizona. Here are a few hiking/biking shots. Special thanks to good folks at Arizona Outback Adventures and Visit Phoenix for pulling everything together and being such great travel companions. You all are the best!
I’m not usually a big HDR guy. The first few of those over-the-top shots I saw with hyper-dramatic clouds and impossible shadow detail were interesting, but I quickly tired of the look. But that’s not to say that all HDR is inappropriate. There are times that I find it incredibly useful, as in this shot of the Alvadora Spa at the Royal Palms in Phoenix, AZ.
The room was soothingly dim but it was quite bright outside. The client wanted to show both the interior and exterior spaces in the same shot — something that might have been a challenge back in the days of shooting transparency. Then, I probably would have waited for dusk, when it would get darker outside and I could achieve a better balance between the brightness of the interior and exterior spaces. Another alternative might have been to light the interior space to bring it closer to the exterior, but I was also interested in keeping a slow shutter speed so that the water falling on the table would be nice and silky looking.
With digital and HDR capabilities now, it really wasn’t difficult to achieve this shot, even given the massive contrast in the scene. I mounted my D700 with a 17-35mm f/2.8 zoom on a tripod and added a neutral density filter to cut even more light and get a longer exposure for the water. I then shot 5 bracketed shots, each 1 stop apart so that I had images exposed at -2, -1, 0, +1, and +2 stops with the middle shot being correctly exposed. The most underexposed image held detail in the bright sky and distant mountain, but the interior was extremely dark. The most overexposed shot held detail in every corner of the dark interior but had blown out portions of the exterior. Not to worry, though. This is where the HDR comes in.
With the images imported into Lightroom, I selected all 5 and opened them using the “merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop” option under the “Photo>Edit In” menu. Photoshop now did all the heavy lifting, opening all 5 images and combining them into one high-dynamic-range image that I was able to save back out as a 32bit tiff. It doesn’t look that great in Photoshop at this point, but not to worry. When that tiff was opened in Lightroom it looked and acted like any other RAW file, except that the shadow and highlight recovery sliders had much, much more information to work with and, with a few quick adjustments, I had the image you see above. Detail in the darkest shadow as well as information in the bright sky above that far mountain. By being careful not to push the contrast and clarity too far, I think I was able to avoid that unnatural look that so many think is the only purpose of HDR.
And, to rebel against the cold rainy supposedly Spring day outside my window today, I’ll leave you with a few more shots of what was a much warmer day spent at the Royal Palms in Phoenix, just a couple of weeks ago…
After a short hike to this rocky river bank along the Salt River near Phoenix, we saw nothing. No wild horses. Our guide assured us that they were usually there. “They’ll come,” she said. A few minutes later there was a faint sound from across the river and a hint of movement through the trees.
“I told you they’d come.”
And for the next two hours we were thoroughly entertained and entranced by these amazing wild animals, living freely here not far from one of the largest cities in the United States.
Two different sides of Phoenix: Urban street artists working on the Calle 16 murals (above) and (below) an early morning spent in the desert biking through the McDowell Mountain Regional Park. I love this kind of contrast in a city.
The folks at the family-owned Rancho Ochoa rodeo arena in West Phoenix were kind enough to allow myself and a few others to photograph them as they prepared for their upcoming competitions. Special thanks also to Jill Richards for providing the backdrop and light modifiers that made for some fun, impromptu portrait sessions with the individual charros and charras. I loved the gold rim on the hat in the shot above and decided to try doing a little black and white toning to the rest of the image, finishing it with an aged film texture.
Here are a few others from that evening:
Two weeks ago, I left a cold, pre-Spring Kansas for a few days of Spring-Summer-ish Arizona. While there, I picked up an assignment that would have me hopping back on a plane just a few hours after returning home, and flying to North Dakota for three days. While it was still decidedly wintery in ND, Arizona was a welcome hint of the Spring that will hopefully one day arrive back home in Kansas (it’s a month or more late this year by my reckoning). It’s odd, jumping seasons like this. But I wouldn’t have traded that week in sunny Phoenix. Great temps, great people and fantastic locations to shoot. I’ll share a few more images over the coming week, before I have to hop my next plane.
First stop in Phoenix was the Desert Botanical Garden, where the blooms were out and it was almost possible to forget Winter ever existed:
While I took plenty of wide shots of the gardens as well, it was the details and textures that caught my eye the most. My 60mm macro lens got a real work out on this particular morning.
And, at the top of this post, a lucky shot I caught as a Flicker and another bird fought over who would be nesting in this particular cactus. Speculation on my part, but they did seem to be in disagreement over something. I was just happy to grab the photo. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time.
