Can hardly stand to stay indoors anymore. Saturday I loaded the boys into the truck and headed out. I specifically headed to Parowan Gap to try some different techniques for photographing rock art. I’m convinced there is a better way to photograph rock art than I have been doing for the past 8 years. I just haven’t found it yet.
The sky was mostly cloudy with patches of sunlight peaking through the clouds. As we were driving away, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw this. I pulled over immediately and grabbed the shot. I love it. My favorite shot from the outing.
So every time I go here, I am secretly location scouting for portraits. Although it isn’t very far from Cedar City, a photoshoot out there involving other people will be longer than my typical 1.5 – 2 hour photo session. I will need to find the right subject(s) to take out there. To be perfectly honest, this is the type of stuff I long to shoot. People in settings like this.
So back to the purpose I originally went out there for, rock art. I tried various things. I took a bunch of bracketed shots to see what rock art would look like in HDR. My results failed miserably. Turns out the purpose of HDR is to blend a wide range of exposures. I knew that, but it wasn’t until I tried turning a fairly tight shot of rock art to HDR that I realized it was just the wrong application for HDR. There just isn’t a wide enough range of tones to make it work. Now, if I were shooting much wider and including more sky with the rocks, then HDR might be the trick. Anyway, I scrapped the HDR idea.
Instead I shot some wide angle like this.
Zoomed in on just the rock art itself.
And zoomed in really tight on specific details.
Not sure which I like best. I guess they each have their place. I’m not sure what I’m after really. Ultimately, I want to have a really nice collection of rock art images and hang them on my wall. Which would you rather see hanging on a wall?