by Jeff Allen
On a recent trip to Las Vegas, working at a school for photographers, fellow photographer John VanSteenberg and I found ourselves with an evening with no seminars. Since we are both Vegas veterans, a night on The Strip was not a huge priority. We decided to get out of town and head 55 miles northeast on I-15 to Valley of Fire State Park. The dashboard thermometer on the car read 110 degrees outside as we reached the outskirts of town. After a quick stop at the convenience store at exit 75 for lots of water and some snacks, we set forth toward the park. The car thermometer now read a milder 104. But hey, it’s a dry heat. It was late enough in the afternoon when we arrived that the ranger/fee station was closed for the day. There is a self pay station for the park entry fees for off hours. Photo Karma dictated that we pay the fee and not sneak in… John had done a fashion shoot in the park several years earlier, and was hoping to find the location from memory, as it offered some good vistas for landscape shooting. The park, Nevada’s oldest, is relatively compact, just under 35000 acres in size and featuring beautiful red rock formations. With only a couple of roads through and around the park it’s relatively easy to scout photo locations. John thought he found his spot, but was not quite sure. I had done a sunrise shoot there, also several years earlier, so things looked different to me, too. John’s spot was good for landscape shots, so it became our starting point. As the sun sank in the west and the light began to warm up, we got our cameras and tripods ready. We shot some typical landscape stuff, were fortunate enough to find some puddles from a thunderstorm that had passed through the day before, and caught some cool reflection shots. I’ll elaborate more on those in another post. Other things we were out to capture were shots at dusk to experiment with low light HDR landscapes, and I was looking for some long exposure shots at dusk and after dark. This is where it got interesting. I found a neat looking formation of rocks literally steps from the road. We stopped the car and put the flashers on since it was getting dark. As I made the first exposures, I liked the way the sky looked with Venus and some stars beginning to be visible and still a bit of light from the direction of the sunset. The rocks in the foreground were bathed in a bright red glow from the emergency flashers on the back of the car. Something I hadn’t expected. I was looking for more of a silhouette of the craggy rocks against the sky, but was pleasantly surprised by the red foreground.
17mm, 30 seconds @f8, ISO 200. If you look closely you can see the shadow cast by the tripod at the far right edge. I decided that the foreground was too bright. Note the 17mm focal length is equal in magnification to approximately 26mm on a full frame sensor or film.
17mm, 30 seconds @f11, ISO 200. Note that the sky still looks good but the rocks are now too dark. Note the slight streak to the stars in all the shots, due to the long exposures.
17mm, 30 seconds@f8, ISO 200, with camera’s built in flash fired to add a bit of detail (at John’s suggestion!) The rocks were about 20 feet away, so the flash was at the limit of its’ capability at that range. Any closer to the rocks and the flash would have washed out the foreground. Bingo! This turned out to be the right combination of exposure and fill light to make the foreground look good and it minimized the tripod shadow cast by the flashing taillights without killing the red hue. Thanks, John. These images were all made with the award-winning Tamron SP 17-50 f2.8 Di-II lens with VC. The Tamron SP 17-50 is designed for cameras using the APS-C size sensor. For this series, the VC stabilizer was turned off since the exposures were long and made on a tripod with a release cable. I chose the 2.8 lens so viewing, focusing, and composing was made easier due to the fast maximum aperture, allowing for a brighter viewfinder. The images could also have easily been captured with my trusty (and also award- winning) Tamron 18-270 VC lens, since the apertures I set were in the middle of the range. Don’t be afraid to try shots like these if you don’t have a fast lens!
More from Valley of Fire in a future post. Until then, good shooting!
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Posted by: femXdd | Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 07:01 AM