Eldorado Canyon
HDR landscape of Eldorado Canyon during sunset.
HDR landscape of Eldorado Canyon during sunset.
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Jan, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken along Rattlesnake Gulch Trail in Eldorado Springs State Park, CO. It was a hard earned reward after I almost decided to abandon the shoot due to inadequate hiking gear, snowy trails, near freezing temperatures at that time of day (dusk/sunset).Time
This image was taken just after sunset. The sun that I had hiked up terribly slippery terrain to get to had just set over the western range of the Rocky Mountains. While I was hiking up the trail, I almost gave up hope on catching the sunset and feared that I had missed the golden light but as I reached the lookout point I had planned to shoot from, I realized the sun was still grazing the edge of the rock face and the rest of the Colorado front range giving me this beautiful golden light.Lighting
The whole idea was to catch the sunset. Since this view was facing east, I wasn't going to be able to capture the sun in the shot but the rapidly fading light made for some incredible views.Equipment
Nikon D7100 with a Rokinon 14MM wide angle lens at a shutter speed of 1/1600 with an ISO of 160.Inspiration
This was during a time where I was obsessed with sunsets and would often visit the same spot for many days in a row to capture the "perfect sunset". I was inspired to take this photo when I had run out of creative places to shoot the sunset near my home town. I had heard about this place thanks to some hiker/climber friends who were regulars here. Seeing their pictures, I decided to take a gander at photographing this state park.Editing
I have a simple post processing system that I use for most of my photos. It starts with light color correction with very minimal saturation and vibrance correction in Abobe Lightroom. For most of my HDR images (like this one) I use Lightroom's HDR stacker to compile the image and do some light RGB and Levels adjustments to bring out brighter midt-tones and shadows while darkening the black tones. Afterwards, I correct the sharpness in Photoshop and if the image needs further color correction, I apply a series of filters using the Nik Collection plugin where I usually apply a graduated ND filter to create a dark blue gradient in the sky.In my camera bag
I usually carry 2 lenses and one camera body. I always have two memory cards in my camera body and one spare card in my bag. Now I carry a series of ND filters to eliminate the need to apply digital ND filters in post-processing. For photo shoots, I carry a Manfrotto BeFree tripod and, depending on the subject I'm shooting, a set of reflectors. I almost always keep a flashlight on hand for night-time shoots and light painting as well as a Glidecam for video shoots.Feedback
My advice for landscape photogrpahers is that the first shot you take at a location/shoot will almost never be the "perfect" shot you're looking for. It takes a lot of time to get a perfect shot so make sure to take as many variants as possible at one spot (i.e. multiple exposures, angles, shutterspeeds, HDRs, etc.). Also, there will be many times that you will set out to shoot a location and it will seem like nothing lines up such as weather conditions and lighting, but don't give up just because the variables that are out of your control are not lining up the way you want them to. Forge on with your shoot no matter what goes wrong and you may just capture something you've never imagined!
