The glow

Intimate landscape in Zion National Park's Taylor Canyon. We were here at sunrise time and the light hitting the canyon walls bathed everything in a red glow.

The glow.
Nikon D300, 3 images stitched. Nikon 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 50 mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 200

Gate keepers

It's been a daunting task to keep up with the images that are being ingested into Lightroom. I have a set of images to share from the Great Sand Dunes, which I visited back in April. I've only shared some fully immersive panos from that trip but I haven't shared much in the way of actual images. See an example of one of such immersive panoramas here. Worse, I haven't been able to share many of my images from a trip to White Pocket in 2014! The best images from that trip except for the ones in the link are still locked up in my Lightroom catalog. At the same time, some revelations in digital imaging as well as the new panorama tools in Lightroom have made me go back to even earlier times. The image I share below for example was taken on October 31 in 2009 in Zion National Park while exploring the Narrows with my friend Dave. We were there just on the cusp of fall color hitting and once in a while we would find trees in the canyon that were in color like the one on the right here while the one on the left is still mostly green. We were in full wetsuits and at places we had to hold our gear above our heads as the water was near our shoulders. I was reminded of these images and the trip while hearing about the tragic deaths that occurred in the slot canyons in this beautiful park just recently. The image below is a stitched high resolution composite of 9 images along the gorgeous Virgin river in the park just a few days ago. I shot this with my D300 camera using the kit lens using my old homemade panoramic head. I stitched this using the new panoramic tools in Lightroom and edited and cropped. The native image is 7530x7530 pixels or 57 megapixels as I cropped from the full stitched image for a better composition. I hope you enjoy the image

Gate Keepers. Zion National Park. Oct 31, 2009. Stitch from 9 images, Nikon D300, Nikon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 at 35mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 200.

A much simpler way to serve retina displays the right images

A while ago, I wrote a post showing how to serve high resolution images to people using retina displays such as the iPad, iPhone, many android tablets, and retina Mac Book Pros (I use one of those which is why I am interested in this). I have now found a far simpler way to do this than I explained before and it all hinges on simply giving a id tag to the image and replacing the src property of the image in a javascript. You still need to have statement in your site's CSS:

<script type='text/javascript'> var retina = window.devicePixelRatio > 1 ? true : false; </script>

Then in your post you call an image the usual way but making sure to add the image width and height specifically as well as pecifying an id

<a href="http://lagemaatphoto.smugmug.com/Landscapes/National-Parks/ZionNP/10459860_zVKwP3#!i=725608231&amp;k=Bm22LF3&amp;lb=1&amp;s=A" title="Tree and glow"><img alt="Tree and glow" height="600" id="zion_011213" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uFHV9Yt3QdrBK8I-ZjdYTCFrGnkrRsmkllP68p_lMzdSGrsN7F5e02QR0SUmrq8YJEdjoORg4j4eIQ9iCYRqJylRGcTs2gsTqwn8dGj34aXSL1XkD10UhcDOj6Dps83OAsk4yQhDgks_V4iK63uZw9l_-p9Jr9GzBlJWeJ6pr6qKl8CpIhsoIFpdk=s0-d" title="Tree and glow" width="480"></a>

Then at the end of your html, or the end of your blogpost include the following:

<SCRIPT type="text/javascript"> if (retina) { zion_011213.src="http://lagemaatphoto.smugmug.com/Landscapes/National-Parks/ZionNP/i-Bm22LF3/4/X3/_DSC0517-_DSC0525-X3.jpg"; } else { ; } </SCRIPT>

This replaces the image in the img tag above with this one that is precisely 2x larger in both dimensions (so 4x in area) and therefore fits retina displays perfectly. I don't think the else part is needed but I like to be neat. A disadvantage of this method above the previous one I talked about is that browsers might end up loading both the low resolution and high resolution image. On the other hand using this method makes your post share correctly on social networks with the image intact. Using the older method the image would never show up. Now to make it complete, here is the actual image referred above:

Tree and Glow. Buy a print. On flickr.
This image is a redo of a 9-image high resolution composite I created in The Narrows in Zion National Park.
A quick way to test the effect is to compare this image in a web browser that supports retina/hiDPI such as Safari and Chrome, to one that doesn't such as old versions of Firefox (15 and below). Of course this only makes sense if you are actually using one of those displays.

The river bend

I am going through a lot of old images that I didn't fully appreciated before. This one is of a bend in the Virgin river in the Wall Street area of the Zion National Park Narrows.

Around the bend. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
High resolution composite stitched from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 1.3s, ISO 200. I made several versions of this image, several of which are in the Zion gallery on my smugmug site.

Narrows reflection

I recently found this image from the Narrows in Zion National Park while going through my Lightroom library. The image is a composite of 9 images to create a very high resolution image and I hadn't noticed while shooting it that I had blown out (i.e. it was overexposed outside of the range of the camera's sensor) the cliff in the back. At the time, Lightroom wasn't able to bring these back to anything resembling nice color so I never bothered stitching the images. However the latest Lightroom versions are far better at this and surprisingly by just dialing back the exposure slider a little on the individual raw files, suddenly a blue sky showed up and detail in the rock appeared. So after some stitching and editing (mostly some dodging and burning) the image below was created that I am very happy with.

Narrow reflection. Buy a print. Image on flickr. Image on facebook. On Google+
High resolution composite from 9 images from Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 200.

Virgin River Fall

Virgin River in Zion National Park at sunset. Reinterpretation of an image I created in fall 2009. Click on the image for a bigger version. The same image on flickr is here

Waterfall image

Here is a full resolution version of the image I blogged about before. The image I showed was a low-res tryout of the larger version I assembled later. Here it is:



This is using a white balance slightly between shade and from the neutral patch. The final image is a 40MP composite from 9 separate RAWs and has exquisite detail. I limit it to about 40 MP because of the filesize limit of smugmug. The image has more resolution than that (effectively double this), but because of the Bayer mosaic, 40 MP is not a bad choice and it still allows prints larger than you can hang in any normal room.

The importance of the right white balance

I talked about images from this place before. This is from a little stream in Zion National Park. It is an extreme example of how important it is to know the right white balance. Below I show a single shot from this place using the as-shot white balance, auto Lightroom white balance, daylight, cloudy and shade, and lastly the white balance taken from the neutral patch on a x-rite colorchecker passport. These images, apart from the camera landscape profile are using completely default processing values.



I made this hextich using the print panel in Lightroom and added the text in Photoshop. Click for bigger. As you can see, both the camera and the auto white balance get this completely wrong. The as-shot and auto are far from reality. The rocks on the top left should be orange as they are standard Zion sandstone. The water should not be Cobalt blue. I should also point out here that this image was made at the bottom of a steep canyon where one cayon wall was lit by the sun, causing a very strong glow light in the area where we were. The water is reflecting the light from this canyonwall. Assuming different white balances gets very different results. You can see the results from assuming daylight to shade. Each is giving very different, but much more pleasant results than "as shot" or "auto". The last panel shows what happens when using the neutral patch on my white balance card on the x-rite passport. It is even warmer than "shade"! Of these, I think I prefer shade as the colors are more interesting. One example in which using a white balance card actually is not that helpful. I came accross many more situations like this in the Narrows and other places where the light was just very strange and where my eyes were not seeing what the white balance standard thinks I should be seeing.

EDIT: I posted another illustrative example in a recent blog post.

See more images from Zion in the link.

More images from Zion

As a followup on yesterday's post, I'm Just posting a few more images that I liked.

This is at a place called Big Bend.

A waterfall close to the start of the Narrows. This is a long wispy thing that comes from far up high. I liked the reflection on the wet rock.

This is in the river in the main area of the park. I liked the deep red and yellow colors and the friendly little rapids with lots of leaves stuck in it.

This is a sunrise at the Towers of the Virgin, a classical image of Zion.

Check out all images in this gallery. There is also a smaller photoset at flickr for those that like the social networking thing.

Zion National Park

I fonally got around to assembling and culling some images from Zion National Park. I was there with my friend Dave for a weekend, followed by a hike to Calf Creek Falls in the Escalante area (more on that place later). We hiked the Narrows, shot some sunsets and sunrises and visited the Kolob Canyons area. Here is a sunset along the Virgin River:

This waterfall is at the start to the Narrows

This is a corner inside the Narrows. Some hikers are visible in the distance. I decided to not clone them out. Inside the Narrows, we met a few photographers. The interesting part was that many of them turned around at the first deep area because it was "impossible". It was actually lower than when I last was there and hardly a problem with the wet suits we were wearing. These things are quite amazing. I did not feel cold at any time, even though it turned out that when I after the hike entered the river wearing just Keenes on my feet, the water was very cold.

The light inside this place is quite strange. It gets a very strong orange color that makes the camera pick weird white balances. When I correct this using a grey card, however, the image appears far too warm, so I left it to my own creative devices and corrected to what I experienced. A white balance card does not work in these circumstances!

This is a sunset along the Virgin river looking at the Watchman and Bridge Mountain. There was some good fall color here.

This was just a tad upstream from the famous bridge, where every evening we came by throngs and throngs of photographers were standing all taking the same image. We resisted the temptation to join them. It is a very nice image though as evident from this image taken by Stephen Trainor who turned out to have been there the exact same weekend.

We also hiked up Taylor Creek in the Kolob Canyons area of Zion. Here we found that on that side of the park every single leaf had already been blown off. This was a strange contrast with the main area of the park, where fall color was mostly just starting! This is a nice reflection from a glowing canyon wall in a small waterfall we found.

This was another one of those areas where a white card white balance gave just too extreme results (you can see some of that in an image I posted earlier) so I dialed it down a little which brought back some other tones than yellow.

On our way out, we went east up through the tunnels and took some images on the checkerboard mesa area.

We had a fun weekend and saw some beautiful stuff there. Check out all images in this gallery. There is also a smaller photoset at flickr for those that like the social networking thing.

EDIT 1: Some more images are posted in the next post.

Virgin river reflection

This is a scene I found last weekend in the Virgin river in Zion National Park. The yellow color is a reflection of fall color on trees around the river. I have another image that at some point I'll post that shows the entire scene. I just liked the abstract shapes in this detail.

Golden waterfall

I went with my friend Dave shooting around Zion. We shot an enormous amount of images that I have to somehow find the time to put together. I'd like to show you at least one image that I put together in my hotelroom at night. This is a small waterfall that Dave had found a few years ago along the Taylor Creek trail. The water is reflecting the rising sun on an opposing mountain and is getting blurred by the long shutter. The color was indeed outerworldy.



As always this is an image assembled from multiple images, so it is very high resolution. The detail in the original is amazing. There will be much more to follow as I can see a gluttony of amazing images ripening in my Lightroom Library.

EDIT: see this image large on my sales website here.
More from Zion is in this and this blogpost.

Zion national Park

Last August we were in beautful Zion National Park in Utah where among other things, we hiked the Narrows. This is an awesome slot canyon at the end of Zion Canyon.


This is my wife and daughter at the fork in the river. My daughter just loved hiking along the river and especially the many rapids that she would sometimes go up to her neck into.


This is a tree that somehow seems to be able to hold on.


My wife ahead of us.

We also hiked at other places and even met a friend that my daughter had made a few days before in Bryce Canyon and her parents, so we hiked with all. Here is a tree perched between rocks:

I like this because of the backlighting on the leaves.

And lastly a sunset from the campground:


More images on the flickr set.