Jon Buffington
Well-Known Member
Early last spring, my wife and I headed out west to far west Texas/lower New Mexico to visit Guadalupe Mtns NP and Carlsbad Caverns NP. We ended up camping in White City, NM and enjoying both park systems. As this was a vacation, one much needed for both of us, priorities were less on critical photography as much as us enjoying ourselves. Needless to say, I took fewer pictures on this trip than most. However, one evening after a long day exploring the parks and countryside, the afternoon looked promising for the possibility of a good light show at dusk. I really wanted to capture El Capitan but finding a suitable spot for framing with a foreground would prove challenging in the late afternoon with limited time for scouting. I found this spot off the road a bit and another photographer (forget his name) whom was travelling through all the parks out west joined me. Not much was to be had and the weather was cold and windy. My wife was napping in the truck but I persisted. Right before I broke the tripod down, we were rewarded for brief moment with decent light. Composition was not what I would have preferred, but, when given lemons, you make lemonade. Here are 2 images that I revisited today with a bit different processing than I did last spring. Side note: in my haste, I accidentally had on auto iso so when bracketing, the iso varied wildly with image quality suffering (digital noise). Again, more work in post compared with what I would normally be working with.
The noise was tamed in post but robs details. Should be good up to decent enlargements. Just makes post processing harder vs. shooting at native iso's.
