The Horseshoe Bend of Glen Canyon is a stunning sight that rivals the Grand Canyon in beauty. Although it is smaller and has fewer activities, the natural scenery is breathtaking.
I visited it at a suboptimal time, but I still managed to capture some nice HDR photos. The sky was adorned with lovely clouds, which added to the charm. I imagine that this place would look even more amazing if photographed at the ideal time and season or even at sunset.
To create HDR landscapes, I have learned to lower the strength in Photomatix to the minimum. This one was at zero. Another difficulty with the Grand Canyon or the Horseshoe Bend is to preserve the contrast of the distant canyon walls. I don’t want to exaggerate it, but I usually apply a gradient filter or a brush in Lightroom to improve them slightly. This helps to balance the contrast throughout the image.
If I were to reprocess this photo today, I would likely just use the built-in HDR photo merge feature in Lightroom, as it produces very natural results. Our cameras have such good dynamic range today that you wouldn’t need to bracket a shot like this to begin with. This was shot on the Canon 5DmkII and the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 II.
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