Grand Canyon & Double Rainbow. HDR; Nikon D90, 3 exposure bracket on tripod, f8, 1/180 sec, iso 200 Tokina 11-17 lens at 12mm. Processed with Photomatix Pro & Adobe Lightroom 4.
Not for me, but for Mai. She had never seen this natural wonder so I was anxious to make it happen for her on our road trip last week. Already we had visited Garden of the Gods, Taos and Sedona. All were very quick visits because both of us had to be home by Sunday night. This was Saturday and by the time we left Sedona it was afternoon and we still were planning a stop at Slide Rock, which is another story for another time.
All I had planned on was getting to the Grand Canyon before sunset. Any earlier in the day and the light would be too harsh for great photographs. We had intermittent rain on the drive up through Flagstaff and the sky was dramatic. I think I watched the clouds more than I did the road.
Just as we pulled into the first lookout area at the Grand Canyon it began to rain again. Always planning my photos in my head beforehand, I mentioned to Mai that there might just be a rainbow by the time we made our way from the car to a spot where we could see the view. Wearing shorts & sandals didn’t matter. We dashed up the trail and along the pathway there was an opening where we caught our first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. There it was, bigger than life and dramatically breathtaking, this unbelievable scene complete with a rainbow! It was actually a double rainbow. Within five minutes the rain stopped for good, the rainbow disappeared and we spent the next hour or so just watching the light change throughout the canyon as the sun went down. Timing is everything, and in our case, luck & intention played a huge part.
Mai is pretty impressed with the Grand Canyon. She says it feels like Yosemite does to her with its’ abundance of natural beauty almost too unimaginable and definitely indescribable without photographs like this to show people.
If you’re a Pinterest fan I hope you’ll pin this on one of your boards. If you have an iPad, maybe this would look good as wallpaper. I did make HD iPad wallpaper for both versions of the iPad and both the HD files are available here.
Strangely enough, Captain Photo has never been the captain of anything, except his golf team in high school. He was on a big boat once, a cuise ship, and was banned from the bridge while offering to help navigate after leaving the ship's nightclub at 3 AM.
What I, Captain Photo, can do for you is to help sail the stormy seas of HDR photography. It's treacherous out there. I've been shipwrecked more than once. (I wasn't Captain those times)
Read the blog and learn the easy and inexpensive process of making Perfect HDR photographs that beginners will love and will make your friends begin to reassess and elevate your worth! You'll quickly be sailing smooth and making amazing images!
~Captain Photo 
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Such a stunning shot of the Grand Canyon – I had a similar shot with a thunderstorm going on across the ridge as well when I was there, but yours looks great
Cheers Dominic! I would love to see yours if you have a link.
You do really nice HDR work, do you use Photomatix? What is your work flow, and would you mind sharing. I am a wedding photographer and want to do some landscapes here in San Antonio. Can you give a guy a few tips? I will keep coming back and posting for sure if you engage with me. Possibly you could help mentor others who find this post too. Thanks
Hi Jason. Thank you. From a high level my workflow is to download all photos into Lightroom. When I am ready to make an HDR image I take my set of bracketed photos and reduce noise in each of them using Dfine, then merge the bracketed photos in Photomatix Pro or Photomatix merge-to-32-bit Lightroom plugin. The resulting file is further developed inside Lightroom and may be further processed using filters from Topaz or Nik. I also may need to use Photoshop to clean up residual grunge left behind by the merging process. Obviously there is much more to teach this process than I can go into here. However, I have developed a process using only Lightroom and the Photomatix merge-to-32-bit LIghtroom plugin to make really nice HDR quickly and easily. Stay tuned for a video tutorial on that. I will love helping you out and anybody else interested in making great HDR images so thanks for asking.
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