Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River

E.J.,

What great colors and a wonderful image.

Very cool shot even if it is an icon. Definately one of the best I've seen of this spot.

What a beautiful image.

Everything about this is wonderful.

jn

DougDolde wrote:Very cool shot even if it is an icon.

What's wrong with icons???

Just another icon shot - NOT! Dramatic lighting and two shot procedure really make this stand out - yes, even for an icon.

Rich

Thsi shot is super awesome!!!!! The sky is great. I love the warm light on the bend. Looks like missing UP ?Michigan wasn't so bad after all (I'm heading back up leaving 4AM).

Great use of wide angle distortion to emphasize the natural shape - icon schmikon...

Excellent digital blend too!
-matt

Nice job, E.J.

Excellent. I have never been able to get this good a shot. Were you using ropes to hold you, it seems you were over the edge on this shot.
I flew back from Denver and saw the area from 6 miles up. I did not get out my camera and am still kicking myself. The whole scene, from Lake Powell, Page, the power plant and Horshoe Bend all in glorious clear air from the plane with clean windows. Now that is another thing I will regret. You did a wonderful shot here.
Keep them coming.

Hey E.J.

I'm not a big 'icon' guy myself .. It's just not what drives my photography. Certainly, magnificent places they are, very beautiful. But, for me, I choose to photograph places where I spend some time, where I want to hang out, where I want to be, not places where I drop by to catch primelight, then move on to the next destination. For me, that's the big thing about icons .. it's the way people photograph them, not the place (or often the photograph) itself. With landscape photography, so many of these scenes are so overdone they just don't move me much anymore. Many of them, especially the canyons, don't seem to be places or subjects that are especially beautiful, but rather they simply photograph very well. I guess what's wrong with icons, for me, is they're kinda like re-writing Stairway To Heaven .. or reading an all-too familiar storyline again. Maybe the idea of making a movie sequel is better .. maybe one, but surely by the 3rd time round some of the artistry starts to be lost somewhere in the wrapping. .. I guess some folks say "stick with a good thing", and others say "it's been done, give me something new".

All that aside, this is a stunning photograph. (Am I contradicting myself now, or what? ). I'd actually like for a tad more room on the sides here, but it's beautiful as is. Technically, I think I'd like to see slightly more contrast between the foreground and the sky .. perhaps because I'm so used to seeing the way film records things now. But IMO, the foreground is a bit too bright compared to the sky, even if that's what the meter said it needed to be. It looks "photographed", and not perfectly natural to me. I think a deal of Galen's work had that look too, so don't take it as a bad thing!

5 stops of light, correct? I'm curious if you've done much comparison of using the digital blending technique (like this) to using a GND .. I'd expect a deal more saturation in the sky on a lot of images, resulting from the longer exposure (maybe under less light situations than this one). Have you seen this at all? Or seen a loss of sharpness from using GND filters over blending 2 exposures.

Cheers

Carl

E.J.,

Your posts cease to amaze me! Maybe it is my unfamilarity with the location, but an aperature of f4? How did you maintain such DOF?

This brought smile to my face. Great shot EJ.

Superb shot!

What a pity that there's nothing here in Florida to even come remotely close to scenes like this. The WA lens is perfect here.

Youssef Ismail wrote:Maybe it is my unfamilarity with the location, but an aperature of f4? How did you maintain such DOF?

With a 16mm lens at f4, I come up with a hyperfocal distance of 7.55 ft which means everything from 3.25 ft to infinity would appear to be in focus.

E.J. great shot!! But isn't it cheating to use the 16-35 lens with the 1Ds That is one nice side effect of the crop factor for the digital - wider super wides! Only with one of these could you squeeze both banks of the river in a vertical.

John

Yousef, as John pointed out, at 16mm DOF is rarely an issue. The closest thing in the photo is at least 30 feet away.

Carl, thanks for your opinions on icons. I personally love to photograph some of natures greatest spectacles and pride myself in getting photos that are a cut above the usual fare in famous locations.

I've seen several pictures of this site, and while I've always though it was a neat location, I hadn't seen a picture of it that really moved me.

Until now.

EJ, I've seen a lot of awesome pictures from you, but I honestly think that this is one of the best photographs I've ever seen, from anyone.

This needs to be blown up as big as the resolution will allow and hung on my living room wall!

-Paul

Hey E.J.,

Please don't take it the wrong way here:

(a) I was simply giving my answer to the question you asked "what's wrong with icons?"

(b) As I pointed out (but perhaps it came across wrong on the web), that's not what drives MY photography. That doesn't mean it should work for anybody else. I'm sure what I do isn't of interest to most other folks too.

(c) You have some fantastic and different images of many beautiful scenes.

Cheers

Carl

EJ, love it great skies and image.. I like shooting icons myself if I can get somethign different than others.

I am heading up there myself to that area in erly November...

Eric