Badwater Salt Flats, Death Valley National Park
Exactly a month ago, Jim Patterson and I were in Death Valley teaching what turned out to be a most outstanding photography workshop. We had a fantastic group of students who shared a great sense of camraderie and a love for photography. We saw some killer locations, like the Mesquite Dunes, Badwater Salt Flats, Devil’s Speedway, Golden Canyon, Zabriskie Point, and Dante’s View, just to name a few. And we had some amazing conditions to boot: crazy dramatic clouds, crystal clear night skies, a roaring sunrise, and some beautifully mellow sunsets. You can read more about the workshop and see a ton of pics from it on our blog: http://www.seatosummitworkshops.com/blog/2011/11/24/death-valley-photography-workshop-the-desert-landscape/ This shot was taken at the iconic Badwater Salt Flats the morning before the workshop started. What started as a colorless and fairly mundane sunrise quickly developed into seriously dramatic skies. With the pure white salt flats, and the moody clouds, the scene was nearly monochromatic, so I decided to process this in black and white to bring out the atmosphere, details, and textures.
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Tech notes on this photo
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Nikon D7000
Tokina 12-24 f/4 at 12mm
ISO100
f/9 – sharpest spot on my lens, allows for sufficient DOF on a crop sensor
1/60 second
Lee 3-stop soft GND
Post-Processing
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In Raw Converter (Nikon Capture NX2)
- Processed single raw file once
- Levels adjustment to increase dynamic range
- Minor global “s-curve” curves adjustment
- Minor brightness decrease to clouds near horizon
- Minor contrast increase to salt flats
In Photoshop:
- Noise reduction via Neat Image plugin
- Selectively sharpened immediate foregreound as well as snow on the mountainss
- Curves layer through luminosity mask to slightly brighten mountains
- Soft light burn/dodge layer to bright overly dark clouds near top of image
- Curves layer to increase drama and tonal separation in the sky
- Soft light burn/dodge layer through luminosity masks to separate tones in the salt flats
- Curves adjustment to darken and increase contrast in salt flats
- Levels adjustment to slightly darken midtones
- Black and white conversion via hue/saturation layers set to color blend mode, hue adjusted to simulate colored filters.
