Continuing a series of posts from a trip to the Southwest United States, this is from a stop in Monument Valley, UT. Without a doubt, this was one place I knew was going to be a bucket-list place to make photos. Being that it is in so many movies, it is almost instantly recognizable as the American West. The initial photo is from John Ford Point named for the director of many movies in the Westerns genre. This was above all the most tourist-y place in the park, but having a rider on a horse in that setting is worthy of a cliche image.
From a photography perspective, there is a pleasing combination of colors here. On one hand the clear blue skies complements the red sands of the rock. With the dry desert air, there is no haze to contend with making all the images sharp right out of camera.
This post continues a trip through the American Southwest with the stop in Bryce Canyon National Park. Until I had seen it for myself, this was not high on my list of places to see. With this in mind, that was the reason we did not budget enough time to explore the area.
Following the Rim Trail, you will come to this panorama at Inspiration Point. At this point, you will be presented with a grand view of the section of the canyon named Bryce Amphitheater. Stretching out is a layered view of hoodoos – irregularly eroded rock formations. Obviously this view really blew me away! Particularly the contrast in other canyons I have visited – Bryce had a different color, and jagged formation as far as you could see. When we were at the top, we could see approaching clouds. So, creating HDR images would bring out a little more interest from the sky. I will definitely be back to visit at either sunrise or sunset – this could have some magical color in that kind of light!
Thanks for all the responses from the post yesterday. I had some questions on the photos that were taken out of the plane window. The photos that I posted were all from the Fuji X100s. Although you are allowed to use small electronic devices during takeoff and landing, I did not turn on my phone out of habit. So I took the photos with the small mirrorless camera, then cropped the images in Lightroom so that you can see more of the details out of the window without the frame of the plane, the wing or the engines in the way.
This is only the second time that I have spent any time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My mother always takes a city tour when she goes to a new place, so we decided to give that a try. We found Untapped Tours of Milwaukee through an online search, and made it down to City Hall to meet the tour guide. This was probably the best thing we could have done with our time!
The tour stopped at all the sights around the city. With the foggy, but nice weather, there were a lot of opportunities for photos, but more importantly, we found all the places that we needed to visit later. The tour started at the impressive Milwaukee City Hall. Even though the building was being renovated, the size of the building and the scale of its tower was impressive both inside and out.
Since we were on a tour, I did not have a lot of time to setup a photo of the building. I just took out my Fuji X100s, and took a series of photos from bottom to top. My thought was that I would combine the photos later in a vertical panorama in Photoshop.It worked! I had to work on the photo with some adjustments due to the way I shot the original images. After the tour, I also had the chance to take more time and make an HDR image. I’ll post more about that on the next Tech Thursday post.
