August 25, 2011

Roadtrip, Part 4, wherein we hike.

Last year we vowed to return here. Without Dog Dude. And hike.

And that's exactly what we did this year. We returned. And headed straight-away to this trail, which is, quite simply, amazing. Stupendous. Awe-inspiring. Colorful. Larger than life.

IMG_3965IMG_3987IMG_4025IMG_4033IMG_4034IMG_4037IMG_4039navajo loop 1At the bottom.  Gosh, that wasn’t hard at all.  Winking smile

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Heading back up.  [huff, puff, rest.  repeat.]IMG_4202IMG_4214navajo loop 2navajo loop 3

Trail facts: we started at 8000 ft elevation; dropped to 7476 ft elevation (duck soup); and climbed back up (not duck soup). Temperature hovered just under 90*. We were mostly in the shade. Big Dude tracked us on the phone. His stats: 2.3 miles. 50 minutes moving time. 1hr47minutes total. And in the following slideshow, I condense our whole hike into 90 seconds so you may vicariously -& quickly- come along with us - down down down & up up up. :-)



Some photo stats: I was traveling relatively "light" - by that, I mean my 5d + 24-105mm lens + 15mm lens. I left the heavy tripod back at the car. I shouldn't have :-(. It would have been nice to have in the hoodoo-slot-canyon. Out in the open sky sections of the trail, I was shooting at smaller apertures (7.1, 8, 11) and 400iso. In the slot canyon (little-to-no sky above), I was shooting at 1600iso and had to open up my aperture (f/4) to let more light in. If I'd had my tripod, I would have shot at 200iso, a smaller aperture (probably f/8), and with a longer exposure. Kicking myself a bit now. Lesson learned. The other lesson I learned: inside these exuberantly orange walls, I should have shot in RAW mode. I'm a die-hard JPG-shooter in most circumstances. But for people pics inside these canyon walls, it really would have behooved me to shoot RAW in order to remove that crazy color cast from skin. RAW would have been additionally beneficial in terms of capturing greater "dynamic range" of light. I lightly tweaked most of my exposures in Lightroom (usually just adding a little fill light to lift shadows), created the slideshow in Lightroom, and created the side-by-side vertical diptychs in LR, using Kellie Hatcher's beta-version LR print templates.

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7 comments:

stacey said...

These are fantastic (even minus the tripod and RAW!)! What an incredible place. Incredible.

And thanks for the photo stats. And can I say it's so nice to know that you are usually a jpeg shooter? I've been feeling the pressure to switch to RAW and I just plain don't have the computer space right now. I'm shooting my first wedding tomorrow (pray for me) and feel like I should shoot in RAW, but feel comfortable in jpeg so why would I switch? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing? Anyway, thanks for the insight! :-)

Anonymous said...

That is a spectacular place!!

Tracy P. said...

WHOA!! That super wide angle is amazing. I NEED to start using a tripod more. Can't bring myself to have one more thing to adjust if I am already lagging behind my family. After school starts I will have to start taking some outings with it by myself.

Anita Johnson said...

I am totally short on words. Totally. We went to Bryce Canyon many years ago...I just don't remember anything as beautiful as this. We went in April, spring break, and it snowed. I guess when you live in Wisconsin, the cold gets packed in the car too. I love your landscape photos, but these are out of this world!

keli [at] kidnapped by suburbia said...

woooooooow!!! so amazing! i'm in awe!

Helen Bratko said...

Beautiful shots!

Tonya said...

Beautiful! And reminiscent of 127 hours. Glad you traveled together. :)