2011 November

Sunrise Over The Mittens In HDR

This is my second post on this image but, this time, processed as a HDR image. You can see my older post here. My friend Robert Arrington, who was standing right next to me while I took this image, was taking his own image of this sunrise and post-processed it as an HDR. You can see his work here on 500px. I was so taken by his sunrise image I decided to try it myself, thus this new image. No more Mittens in silhouette but more depth and detail in the HDR image.

My original image was post-processed from a single image to get the silhouette effect while this HDR image was post-processed from three images spaced two stops apart (two stops under, correct exposure, two stops over) then merged together.

Please let me know which image you like, the original image or this new HDR image.

Don’t forget if you want any of these images on my blog as prints, just go to my gallery and double click the image you are interested in to see the price list. Most of my newest images have pricing, if one dosen’t just let me know but the pricing should be the same.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

admin :: Nov.26.2011 :: Monument Valley, Southwest :: No Comments »

Forrest Gump Highway, Utah

Here is another fun image I took in Utah during the workshop. This highway is actually Hwy 163 in Utah. At mile marker 16, heading north or south, you will be at the spot where Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) stopped running in the movie Forrest Gump. There is an actual sign on the left side of this image stating all this. You must look for the sign or the mile post, most people are looking straight ahead at Monument Valley and drive right past it.

There were six of us shooting this image with everyone trying to shoot from the middle of the highway. We had a spotter who gave us 20 seconds before we got hit by a vehicle. Yes, I photoshopped out one vehicle on the highway and a few buildings way out in the distance.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L at 58mm

ISO 200, 1/320 sec at f/11

admin :: Nov.19.2011 :: Monument Valley, Southwest :: No Comments »

Sunrise Over The Mittens, Monument Valley Tribal Park, AZ

This image was taken from the View Hotel just inside Monument Valley Tribal Park. In fact this shot could be taken from any of the rooms at the hotel because they all face this view from their balconies…nice. I was with a photo workshop from Moab, Moab Photo Tours, traveling the area taking great photos of Anasazi ruins and great landscape subjects like Monument Valley. We were very fortunate this trip to get plenty of clouds for our images. Usually we get severe clear skies which make it difficult sometimes to get just the right shot. One is overwhelmed in Monument Valley anytime of the day…so, so many photo opportunities.

This image, I chose to keep the mittens silhouetted to focus on the sunrise. I stopped down the aperture to f/22 to get the star-burst just when the sun came out from behind a cloud close to the horizon. All this image needed was a little tweak in Lightroom 3 to bring out what I saw standing there in awe photographing this sunrise.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm F4L at 32mm

ISO 200, 1/15 sec at f/22

admin :: Nov.12.2011 :: Southwest :: 1 Comment »

Moon House Outer Ruins

This is my first black/white image in probably twenty years. I used to shoot with a 4×5 Toyo Field camera and a Mamiya 645 medium format camera when doing my black/white photography. Now it is shoot a digital color image and press the “BW” button in the digital darkroom to turn the color image into a black/white image. One has to now think in black/white before you take the color image but that is what I had to do anyway back in the day. Since you see in color you also need to convert what you see into black/white before the shutter is pressed. No more dodging and burning under the enlarger, now it is done with a few strokes with your mouse or tablet. All new and interesting but I do miss all the mechanics of developing the film and printing the image on photographic paper.

The Moon House complex, as I call it, consist of the main ruin and these outer ruins. These ruins might have been used as granaries, lodging, or a combination. The logs at the bottom of the image are actual wood beams used as the roof to a ruin I am standing in front of at chest high. The Moon House is a very well preserved and complex ruin in Utah.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 17-74mm f4L at 40mm

ISO 200, 1/4 sec at f/22

Post Processed with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2