Court of the Patriarchs

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 7 December 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

The Court of the Patriarchs warms with morning alpenglow as the Virgin River flows in the foreground in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah. I placed my tripod on the edge of the river's bank and took a low perspective with my 16-35mmL at 16mm and used a 5-second shutter to get some movement in the water. A 5-stop Singh-Ray soft edge split-neutral density filter helped in holding back exposure in the dark canyon while allowing for the sky and alpenglow to record as my eye saw the scene. This image was a composite of three different RAW conversions of a single image accomplished with layers and masks in Photoshop CS4. I fine-tuned the sky exposure with the help of Nik Viveza and brought out the fall color with the new Hue/Saturation control in Photoshop CS4 which allows a simple mouse click to select the color, then simply by holding and dragging the mouse horizontally across the frame, one can add or subtract saturation. I will be teaching these and more Photoshop techniques in my upcoming 2009 workshops. Please visit my website at http://www.donsmithphotography and click on the Workshop tab on my homepage for more information.

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