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I made
this image while hiking the world-famous Virgin
River Narrows of Zion National Park, Utah. The
Narrows are essentially a giant slot canyon, with
towering cliff walls reaching hundreds of feet into
the sky. The Virgin River flows through the Narrows,
and much of the hike is spent slogging through fast
moving knee and waist deep water. The Narrows, like
all slot canyons, are best photographed on a sunny
day during the late morning and early afternoon
hours. During this time, sunlight striking the rocks
at the top of the canyon is reflected and bounced
down into the shadowed parts of the canyon, making
the sandstone walls glow with a soft, warm light.
When the water is in shadow, its only illumination
source is light reflecting from the blue sky above,
imparting a blue color cast. Accordingly, the
Narrows provide plenty of opportunities to juxtapose
cool and warm tones, which I believe can be very
effective for creating powerful images.
While
exploring the Narrows for a second day, I entered a
relatively open section of the canyon, and turned
around to see what things looked like behind me (it
is always a good idea to stop and look around from
time to time). Sunlight striking a peak towering
over the canyon, as well as light from the blue sky
above, bounced down upon the water and rocks at my
feet, while in the background the canyon walls
glowed orange. I chose a composition that carefully
excluding the sun-lit peak, as it was too bright
relative to the rest of the scene which was in
shadow. I was attracted to the metallic reflections
over the rapids in the foreground. The foreground
rapids became the compositional anchor for my image,
with the flowing water leading the eye through the
scene to the background glowing rocks. In doing so,
I hoped to create "visual flow" which would generate
the illusion of depth, perspective, and movement,
preventing the image from being a mere static,
two-dimensional representation of the scene. I then
attached a polarizer filter to my lens to see what
effect it would have. While full polarization
removed the reflections in the foreground water,
partial polarization strengthened the reflections
and removed some distracting glare from the canyon
walls.
To read
more about my exploration of the Narrows, visit my
Virgin River Narrows photo journal entry.
Technical data: Canon 5D Mark II, 14-24mm
zoom lens (@14mm), polarizer filter, Aperture Priority mode, manually
focused using Live View, ISO 200, f/16, 8
seconds. |
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As
always, I strive to create a "film-like" look when
processing my images. Color slide film handles
cool/warm contrast very well, rendering
simultaneously both cool and warm tones with vivid
saturation. While processing this file, I choose a
white balance that preserved the blues. Typically, a
Daylight setting (5000k) or cooler is ideal for
preserving cool tones in an image. Often, these
cooler settings will mute warmer tones in the scene.
I compensate for this by increasing saturation in
the reds and yellow in Photoshop, usually with a +25
to +30 boost. Blue tones also get a boost, albeit to
a lesser degree. For this image, I also increased
contrast using a Curves adjustment layer to give the
image some extra "pop." Finally, I toned down the
white highlights by doing a selective Curves
adjustment on the highlights in the scene, using
layer masking to apply the effect only to the water.
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