Advance of Goliaths
Advance of Goliaths, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area
In the evolving pursuit of large print images, high detail and big dynamic range images I have “Advance of Goliaths”. On the day I took this I was about 30 minutes West of Las Vegas, NV on the Southern edge of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The entire morning was filled with amazing clouds, high winds and sporadic rain.
Check out the specs and equipment below then lets dive into the image a little deeper.
This image has the following specifications:
5 HDR images, 25 images total
Data Size: 113 megapixels
Physical Size: 56”x22”
Equipment used:
Camera Body: Canon EOS R5
Lens: RF 50mm ƒ/1.8 USM
Tripod: Slik Pro AL-324
Tripod head: Manfroto 494 Center Ball Head
Camera Bag: Atlas Packs, Athlete Pack
The RAW image I started with was comprised of 25 images, all of which are 45 megapixels from the Canon R5. I combined these into an HDR Panorama in Photoshop for two big reasons.
Adobe Camera Raw provides excellent control of the image like Lightroom Classic while also being able to be kept as a smart object in photoshop. This makes it incredibly easy to move between color corrections and heavy editing.
Combining HDR and Panoramas in Photoshop produces a MUCH sharper image. Lightroom is fine if you only post to social media but under close inspection the Lightroom version is softer than baby poo.
Here is a screen grab of the RAW image without edits.
RAW image: Advance of Goliaths
Because I’m working with an HDR image I have a ton of bit-depth to work with and if ACR would allow it I would have worked in 32 bit while processing the image. Unfortunately the maximum that I’m aware of is 16 bit. By working in 16 bit I’m able to maximize both color and dynamic range of the image. With that in mind I focused more on isolating elements of the image and working with them independently, rather than the image globally.
Global Change
The only significant changes to start was to warm the image up and correct the white balance to make the final image look more like the conditions it actually was. After that a lifting of the shadows quite a ways to help bring out some details in the darker areas. Dehaze helped bring out the finer details in the rocks and cut through a bit of the atmosphere before moving on to the selective edits.
Sharpen for the win
Over sharpening or crisp lines? Cranking up the sharpening slider makes your image look horrible. Here’s a game changer tip when it comes to refining edges globally on my photos. Use the masking slider first.
Press and hold the option key while you move the masking slider to the right. The farther you move you will see less of the image will be white. I generally keep the masking to 92 but here’s the best part. Only the areas that are white will be sharpened.
This prevents the image from being sharpened in every pixel and crisps up the edges of the image cleaning it up nicely. You can thank me in the comments below.
Hue
There was such a small amount of blue in the image that it was more of a distraction than anything. The blue was pushed to the magenta side to help blend it in.
Saturation
Bringing down the saturation of the Blues and purples to stay away from that overdone purple and pink HDR look that is oh so prevalent.
Luminance
Bringing up the brightness of blue and purples helps hide the distracting colors along with the reduction of saturation.
Color Grading
This is where the global changes made the most impact. Because I have the sky/clouds isolated these changes effected primarily the rocks of the Goliaths i wanted to viewer to focus their attention on.
Lifting the highlights brought the rocks more attention. As you can see I only used the color grading panel to manipulate the light and dark of the image and left the coloring to the isolated elements below.
Selective Edits
Sky
In order to keep the sky the sky but still have detail and bring in contrast an interest to the top half of the image the shadows are brought down. The blacks were decreased to add a more wide spread effect but the whites of the sky were increased. This helps provide more of a glow to the the area rather than just making it brighter. The last part is a small increase in color temp to warm the clouds up even further.
Foreground
This isn’t the main course of the image, it’s the mountains and the sky. Isolating this area allows me to focus on the main shadow cast by the clouds off the the left of the image. Here the goal is to leave only enough detail to not look out of place but also darken it up enough that the viewer isn’t scanning the area for distractions of points of interest.
Bringing down the exposure just a bit and dropping the shadows helped bring that area out of focus.
This area was selected by utilizing the brush selection tool with a moderately hard feather and a heavy flow and density setting.
The Goliaths
This is a two part process to refine the focal element of the image. The first selective edit is focused on balancing the entirety of the rock faces and bring in a healthy amount of brightness to the entire middle ground. This entailed bumping the exposure just over a half a stop and pushing the contrast by 12 points. I also lifting the whites as I did with the sky to bring in more of a “glow” effect while also bringing down the highlights to prevent clipping of the brightest areas. I then brought down only the blacks to help add in a little more contrast and give the mountains a little more “punch”
Once the larger area edits were complete it’s time to bring the attention over to the rock faces, the details of the rocks and the texture I emphasized while shooting. After color grading and temperature correction the white rocks were too yellow so the area was selected using the brush tool with a soft feather, light flow and heavy density.
Once selected the exposure was brought up just a touch but the whites were increased by 43 points. This helped a lot but to address the yellow color the saturation was brought down by a -42 points. This was analogous to using the teeth whitening preset in Lightroom but it helped bring the attention right where I wanted. The texture of the the mountains and details in the rocks and the way the light was warming them up is exactly what I was hoping to convey from the day.
Summary
This was one of the better mornings of shooting I’ve had since I moved to Las Vegas in early 2020. There isn’t a season of monsoons like I had in Phoenix where big storms roll through across big open areas. What I planned this day was just catching sunrise and headed home. Because the light lasted so long and changed so quickly I spent three more hours than planned shooting and driving through the back area of the conservation area.
After editing the photos the mountains just came across to me as three massive elements pushing their way through the desert. Because of their size the term Goliath seemed fitting. The way the image trails off to the left showing flat ground waiting to be uplifted and moved out of the way as the rock faces make their way East. Advance of Goliaths.