#looking ene

There Are Those Moments... (Big Bend National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: When one stops driving and takes in a view of mountains that seems to stretch across the horizon as well as the near to far. I'd just finished exploring the Santa Elena Canyon and was heading back into the main part of the national park to enjoy a hike on a desert trail (I found myself enjoying two, but that's a later story). For this setting, I wanted to capture the rolling hillsides and folds in the desert landscape nearby. Not only was the view one to soak in but I also found the color contrasts to complement the far off view to the rugged Chisos Mountains off in the distance. The Chisos Mountains with Emory Peak and the South Rim just seemed to stand out from this roadside pulloff. By keeping my SLR camera in M mode, I was able to adjust the metering with the shutter speed to capture a slightly lower exposure during the bright mid day sun. By angling my SLR camera slightly downward and then cropping, I found I was able to bring out a feel for a more panoramic image.

Saguaro Cactus with a Backdrop of the Tucson Mountains (Black & White, Saguaro National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: With some adjustments to a few sliders in Silver Efex Pro 2, I was able to bring a slightly faded look to the image around the Red Hills Visitor Center in Saguaro National Park.

Taking a Photo of a Photographer (Banff National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: Sometimes the image captured is more than just the setting, beautiful as it may be. Sometimes including a person in the image adds its own touch. Sometimes it's perspective while other times it's a compliment to appreciating being outside and taking in the wildness of nature as John Muir often said. That what this image is about: taking in a view and imagining what another person might also be enjoying at that same moment.

A View Back to Gate Pass (Black & White) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: For this image, I got down low behind a nearby cactus bush and used that to focus the image. With a more open aperture, I then left the rest of the image with the jagged mountain peaks slightly out of focus. But the idea for the image was that they were just a backdrop for this desert setting in Tucson Mountain Park. I later converted to black & white using Silver Efex Pro 2.