When you are in midday light, especially in canyons such as these, contrast is your friend so use it. Shadows help define those edges and will put some mystery in your images. Here I am shooting with the Nikon 7o-200 @ 70mm. What captured my eye was the giant shadow. What an interesting graphic and it helps define the scale of the Courthouse Towers in the Moab Arches National Park. This Image also helps to demonstrate that contrast and shadows are worth the time to frame up to create, capture and share. If this was early morning light, then no shadow !
Canyon colors, those rich browns, golden glow, earth iron reds and slate blue skys are a tale of woe for our DLSR’s sensors. Our sensors are trying to process a mid-tone grey so your images may be missing that saturation ‘pop’ out of camera. Dan Margulis wrote a book on it, called by others as ‘the canyon conudrum’….. If you are looking to post process your canyon images, you might want to read this book, and learn how to use the Photoshops Lab space to fine tune your final output.
Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace
The tips that he teaches in the Lab space are fairly simple and straight forward and you will improve the canyon colors of those fantastic mesas, arches, sand and rock.
