Monument Valley HDR – The North Window

Lately I’ve been reviewing some of my images from my Southwest US photo safari and experimenting with single image HDR processing.  I recently purchased Nik HDR Efex Pro and it is now one of my favorite HDR processing tools.  While the “over processed” look seems to be all the rage these days, I prefer to attempt to use HDR to achieve the same dynamic range that I remember my own eye seeing at the time I took the image.

If you have ever been to the northern Arizona/southern Utah area, then you are familiar with the vivid red sandstone rock formations that are everywhere you turn.  The photo here was taken at what is called “The North Window” — another popular photo spot on the scenic road around the Navajo National Monument (as they call it).  I loaded the original image into Nik HDR Efex and tweaked it from there.

A view to the north through two massifs in Monument Valley

Canon 5D MkII EF Canon 28-135mm @ 44mm f/9.0 ISO 200.  Processed in Nik HDR Efex Pro.

Now it’s time to plan the next trip to this magical place.  Who knows where the next Spring photo safari will end up?  Anybody wanna go with?

All the best … BDW

This entry was posted on Friday, December 24th, 2010 at 11:17 AM. It is filed under All, Photo Safari. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.