We have had some much needed rain in the Texas Panhandle over the last few days. I took a short road trip (about 1hr.) to this location south of Claude, TX along hwy 207. The foreground is the Palo Duro Canyon (although this is outside of the boundaries of the state park).
Ideally, I would prefer a better foreground, but it was a last minute decision to chase the light so I didn't have much time to find a good location for a foreground but all of the action is in the sky anyway.
Also, of note I was trying to see how accurately I could manually focus with a focus screen that I purchased for my camera so the foreground focus is a little off.
Although this may seem obvious it really is amazing how much difference the right light can have on a photograph. My main goal for this trip was to better understand how light behaves so that I can be more prepared in the future to be in the right place at the right time.
f16 @ 1/4 sec. ISO 100
Polarizer
2-Stop soft grad handheld
Yep, better clouds in the second one but I too like the rainbow better in the first. Very nice, Brian.
Posted by Darren Huski on June 21, 2009 at 5:00 PM
Brian-
I like the second one better. All the action in both images is in the sky and the second one really brings that out better. BTW- nicely done making the sky most of the image. Too much ground would really lesson what you have here. Getting as much sky as you did really was spot on.
If you are going out light chasing, here is a tip that might help. First move your focus off the shutter to a back button. Any Canon or Nikon can do this and think most others can too. That might seem wierd for 30 seconds but after that you will never go back to a shutter button based focus. What that will do is allow you to prefocus on infinity. Then when you take an image it is not trying to focus on clouds (which can be a pain to focus on).
That frees you up for my next suggestion. Set you f/stop to around f/5.6. That is fairly wide open but for an infinity image it is fine. That will keep your shutter speed fairly fast even with a polarizer so you should be able to hand hold.
The trifecta of this is now you can photograph out the window of the car.
Light chasing usually requires alot of driving. If you get out and set up at every shot you cannot be moving. My buddy and I do light chasing like this (or driving around town too). We drive and the passenger takes images while moving or we stop and both just photograph out the window. If it is really awesome, we stop and go for tripods. But for chasing light doing that gives you great image quality and lets you keep moving.
Usually from the road there is no need for a foreground since the major interest is always at infinity. So at f/5.6 we have plenty of DOF and can handhold. We forget grads in this situation and just double process RAW files if we need to bring up the ground.
Now if the location is too perfect we make alot of stops. I was out on my way to Big Bend and on a 30 mile stretch of road near Marfa I think I stopped every 100 yards for 30 miles. Probably wore out my key I started the car so many times :-)
Posted by Wayne Rhodus on June 21, 2009 at 10:55 PM
After long consideration the second image gets a slight edge as my favorite of the two. Since you were chasing the light I feel that the second image delivers more impact in the sky even though the rainbow is less pronounced. There is more vivid color in the blues & whites and even the magenta pastels are more saturated in the second image. Looks like a fun chase in either case. Thanks for sharing Brian!
I agree with Wayne on the second shot. The clouds show action where the clouds in the first shot seem more passive. Good captures Brian.
Posted by Ken Bachman on June 23, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Brian, I like the first one better. I like the way the sunlight really emphasizes the contrast of the canyon rocks against the darker trees. I also think I might make a verticle crop of about the right half.
This looks like a place I might have to see sometime. Thanks.
I think I prefer the first version slightly over the second because the rainbow just glows in the first. The cloud action in the second is really cool though. Both are nice.
Discussion
10 repliesIdeally, I would prefer a better foreground, but it was a last minute decision to chase the light so I didn't have much time to find a good location for a foreground but all of the action is in the sky anyway.
Also, of note I was trying to see how accurately I could manually focus with a focus screen that I purchased for my camera so the foreground focus is a little off.
Although this may seem obvious it really is amazing how much difference the right light can have on a photograph. My main goal for this trip was to better understand how light behaves so that I can be more prepared in the future to be in the right place at the right time.
f16 @ 1/4 sec. ISO 100
Polarizer
2-Stop soft grad handheld
I like the second one better. All the action in both images is in the sky and the second one really brings that out better. BTW- nicely done making the sky most of the image. Too much ground would really lesson what you have here. Getting as much sky as you did really was spot on.
If you are going out light chasing, here is a tip that might help. First move your focus off the shutter to a back button. Any Canon or Nikon can do this and think most others can too. That might seem wierd for 30 seconds but after that you will never go back to a shutter button based focus. What that will do is allow you to prefocus on infinity. Then when you take an image it is not trying to focus on clouds (which can be a pain to focus on).
That frees you up for my next suggestion. Set you f/stop to around f/5.6. That is fairly wide open but for an infinity image it is fine. That will keep your shutter speed fairly fast even with a polarizer so you should be able to hand hold.
The trifecta of this is now you can photograph out the window of the car.
Light chasing usually requires alot of driving. If you get out and set up at every shot you cannot be moving. My buddy and I do light chasing like this (or driving around town too). We drive and the passenger takes images while moving or we stop and both just photograph out the window. If it is really awesome, we stop and go for tripods. But for chasing light doing that gives you great image quality and lets you keep moving.
Usually from the road there is no need for a foreground since the major interest is always at infinity. So at f/5.6 we have plenty of DOF and can handhold. We forget grads in this situation and just double process RAW files if we need to bring up the ground.
Now if the location is too perfect we make alot of stops. I was out on my way to Big Bend and on a 30 mile stretch of road near Marfa I think I stopped every 100 yards for 30 miles. Probably wore out my key I started the car so many times :-)
This looks like a place I might have to see sometime. Thanks.