Peering into the Wave

Peering into the Wave

Peering into the Wave, Arizona

I prepared two versions of this photo, and go back-and-forth on which I prefer. I tend to fall into the landscape-shooting routine of excluding people and, where possible, indications of their impact on the environment (footprints, for example). While I was setting up this shot at The Wave, my friend Suad (LionTX on Flickr) was also there taking some shots. Since I was setting up my tripod to bracket the exposure I did a quite test shot while he was still there.

I took three exposures and blended all three into a composite photo (I did a lot more exposure-bracketing than usual on that trip to the southwest, but have found I haven't needed to make use of them in general). This shot has some of the brighter exposure blended into the bottom left to lighten the shadows, and the darker exposure is masked into the sky, to keep the color more natural.

When I reviewed my photos I found that I really liked the version with Suad standing there, maybe just for a sense of scale, or maybe because it's more important as a souvenir of that trip. Since I hadn't moved my tripod between the setup shots and the 'real' shots, it was trivial to swap the version with Suad into the exposure. So just for comparison, I'm posting both versions.

As for the location, this is just a small sort of back door to The Wave. When you're looking into the Wave from the direction you arrived (such as in this shot) there is a void off to the left. This is inside that void looking back into the main wave.

SHAMELESS PLUG: In unrelated news I entered a photograph in an Outdoor Photographer Magazine contest, and am a finalist. If you're registered (or want to register... don't let me stop you) you can vote for the Reader's Choice winner. If you felt so inclined you could always vote for me. My photo can be found here. I'm not exactly in the lead, so I could use the votes. :-P

Nikon D90 | Sigma 10-20@10mm | f/11 | 1/80s | ISO200 | Tripod

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