Bright Angels

i recently made a short trip out to Arizona and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share the jawdropping beauty of the Grand Canyon with my friend Melissa.  its one of those things that really just chokes me up inside when i see it and i could see from Melissa’s reaction that she was feeling the same way.  its just so achingly beautiful and so vast that the feelings of humbleness and humility are overwhelming.

i created this image as a composite from 5 other images using Photoshop’s HDR (High-Dynamic Range) capabilities.  the idea is that you over expose and under expose a few shots and photoshop blends the shadow and highlight areas into one well-balanced photograph that you camera would normally not be able to capture.  this photo (or series) was taken late afternoon as we decided to take a short hike down into the canyon where the perspectives are a bit more dramatic.  there’s a little bit of distortion in the clouds because they were moving.  and i shot this at 16mm, so the movement of the clouds is really exaggerated a little bit.  i’ll include the 5 original photographs used to make this shot just as a reference so you can see what we’re really working with here.