I was trying to capture the texture of the landscape as well as the scale of the geographic features as well. It was partly cloudy, so I was able to take pictures in direct sunlight as well as in diffuse cloud cover. I'm a little unsure of my camera settings, but now realize I should have had the camera set to RAW format because the camera applied white balancing that skewed the colour of the soil. I tried to correct this using GIMP, but am not happy with the results. See below - all photos takes with Nikon D3000.
1) I tried framing a shot with leaves to create a mood of secrecy/isolation - like we just 'stumbled upon' this site (even though there were tourists everywhere). {f/8.0 1/250 sec ISO 400}
2) The harsh sunlight shows the texture of the landscape, but I couldn't get the colour right. Blasted 'auto white balance'! Should have turned that off and used the RAW format... {f/11.0 1/500 sec ISO 400}
3) I like this shot, except for the fact that it is missing a main object/character. The paths created by the ridges all lead the eyes to the top of the image - where they promptly find NOTHING. {f/11.0 1/500 sec ISO 400}
4) This place creates a real feeling of desolation - I tried to capture that by excluding the trees in the background... {f/9.0 1/320 sec ISO 400}
5) In this shot I tried to capture the scale of the badlands by including people and the car in the background... {f/11.0 1/500 sec ISO 400 - cropped from original image}
6) I include this one just because I like the shot... {f/11.0 1/500 sec ISO 400}
I've numbered the images - please leave comments and suggestions for improvement. Also, any suggestions for correcting the white balance would be appreciated. I use GIMP for photo manipulation.
(http://www.gimp.org/)
Thanks,
John
