zeekil

wave water

Aug, 2016

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Behind The Lens

Location

The Wave is a natural sandstone formation, and is located in the Coyote Buttes North area of Northern Arizona. It has always been on my "bucket list", and I finally decided that 2015 was the year that I would go there for an adventure with my daughter, my sister, and my best friend. The park service there only chooses 20 people by lottery per day to receive a special permit to hike there, so it took 6 months of entering the lottery to be chosen for a date 4 months out into the future... August, the hottest month of the year... in the desert.

Time

The Wave is reached by hiking approximately 3 miles across open desert. Because the road was washed out by a rainstorm the day before we arrived, we had to drive 100 miles to reach the trailhead... which was only 9 miles away from our carefully chosen campsite. We got a later start than we wanted to, actually got lost (hiking an extra 3 miles!) and ended up reaching our destination at just before noon... fortunately, an ideal time of day to capture the variety of colors there.

Lighting

Normally, I would have loved to arrive very early in the day to catch the golden sun, and the shadows, but because of our 3 hour drive to reach the trailhead (and other delays) we arrived at mid-day. The lighting could not possibly have been any brighter due to being in the desert at noon on a sunny day with very few clouds.

Equipment

I used my GoPro Hero 3 Silver to take this picture. The depth of field, the wide angle, and the high definition worked in my favor.

Inspiration

There are literally thousands of pictures of this fantastic natural formation on the internet, and none of them could ever do it justice. I was anxious to have my own "shot" at photographing the place, and trying to capture it's beauty. I love to take pictures of water, but being in the Arizona desert in August, the water in the picture was a huge surprise. It had obviously been there for at least a few weeks, as there were tadpoles swimming about. The other 10 or so people that were there were all very respectful of the place, and of one another, and were careful not to disturb the water. It created a nice mirror effect that really augmented the colors and textures that were present there.

Editing

The gorgeous natural colors of the sandstone and the clear sky really eliminated any need to "tweak" the picture. Due the wide angle provided by the GoPro, the only post-processing that I needed to do was in cropping the picture to narrow the scope and place the water in the optimal position in relation to the sandstone walls of the formation.

In my camera bag

30 years ago, I had a nice 35mm set up with multiple lenses, extension tubes, and filters in my bag (which now makes a nice doorstop). After taking a long hiatus from photography, and only slowly and tentatively embracing digital photography during the past 10 years (on a tight budget), I have graduated from one 2nd hand camera to another... upgrading a bit each time. At this point, my extremely versatile GoPro 3 is always with me, along with my Sony NEX-5N, that I dearly love.

Feedback

Advice: Go to cool photogenic places. It's almost impossible to take a bad picture of The Wave. Like so many of the wonderful pictures that folks have posted on ViewBug, being in the right place at the right time is a huge factor in taking a picture that seems special. Perspective and composition are extremely important factors. Advice: Take a bunch of pictures. I took about 400 pictures at this location, and I love about 388 of them. It's nice that some folks like one or two. :)

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zeekil

zeekil

wave water

Behind The Lens

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