Okay okay, so it wasn't really a "hike". We drove a car. But still, it was a hike of a drive for our little car!
We started our day off with the intention to do a "Border Run" with our daughter. Let me back up. In Dubai, children need to be sponsored for a visa by their father. The process takes 2-3 months on the speedy side. Unfortunately though, a travel visa for the child (or anyone for that matter) is good for 30 days. In order to keep our daughter legally in Dubai we needed to leave the country and re-enter to renew her travel visa. Hence the need for a border run.
After meeting up with some friends to guide us through the experience we ventured out to see the sights of the Al Ain area and ended up at Mt Jebel Hafeet. It was a beautiful drive to the top... and hot! To be honest, we got close to the top, saw a line of cars at a stand still that was over a kilometer long and decided to turn around. But thats okay, because I wanted a shot that had some depth and interest, so half way up the mountain was more ideal than the top as I could place something in the foreground, midground, and background.
It was blazingly hot, so I knew I wasn't going to spend much time outside the car. Plus my kiddo had fallen asleep, so my wife and I had to trade off to get out and see the view.
I remembered passing this point on the way up, and I had made a note of the way light was falling on the landscape. I saw the sun behind the rocks on the left, making them fall into shadow, and then I remembered looking at the mountain wall to my right where the sun was blazing them to life. In my mind I saw a pano where the skies and landscapes would flip flop in terms of exposure from left to right/up/down and got excited to make an image.
There was a bit of haze, so the distance you could see was a bit limited. It was obvious that I needed to create a panorama, but I wanted that depth that you get from a clear day, so I thought carefully about the gear I would use. I planned on using a wide angle 18mm lens with a circular polarizer on the front, and my specially converted infrared camera. (I'll post another article about infrared shooting next)
I knew the polarizer would make any skies turn a nicer deeper blue and also cut down on some reflected light. I also knew that the infrared camera body (which only creates black and white images) would add to the deepening of the blue skies (resulting in deeper black for the B&W image) and it would also do a good job at cutting through the haze - allowing the camera to pick up more of the background than I could see by just standing there.
To make the image, I first spot metered the darkest and lightest areas that I wanted to shoot by zooming in on aperture priority mode, reeding the suggested shutter speed (stopped to f/11, ISO100), and then did a quick guesstimate on a setting that would retain detail in the highlights and shadows. I then switched into manual mode at 1/125th and began creating a pano. I started to the left and used the horizon line as a guide point while I clicked off each frame. I believe I shot about 12 frames total, but only used 6 to stitch the final image together. (It is always a good idea to overshoot far more than you believe you need with panoramic creations)
Once I got home I stitched the images together in Photoshop CC, did some minor editing to remove a few distractions, added a touch of dodging/burning to bring forth some detail in the shadows, then finished some minor exposure adjustments in Lightroom CC. It came out just like I had hoped! The backlit mountains on the left fell into darkness with the sun blazing the sky into brightness above, while on the right side of the frame the sun created a super bright mountain with dark skies above.
For more stories filled with camera settings and tutorials, check back for our next post!
We started our day off with the intention to do a "Border Run" with our daughter. Let me back up. In Dubai, children need to be sponsored for a visa by their father. The process takes 2-3 months on the speedy side. Unfortunately though, a travel visa for the child (or anyone for that matter) is good for 30 days. In order to keep our daughter legally in Dubai we needed to leave the country and re-enter to renew her travel visa. Hence the need for a border run.
After meeting up with some friends to guide us through the experience we ventured out to see the sights of the Al Ain area and ended up at Mt Jebel Hafeet. It was a beautiful drive to the top... and hot! To be honest, we got close to the top, saw a line of cars at a stand still that was over a kilometer long and decided to turn around. But thats okay, because I wanted a shot that had some depth and interest, so half way up the mountain was more ideal than the top as I could place something in the foreground, midground, and background.
It was blazingly hot, so I knew I wasn't going to spend much time outside the car. Plus my kiddo had fallen asleep, so my wife and I had to trade off to get out and see the view.
I remembered passing this point on the way up, and I had made a note of the way light was falling on the landscape. I saw the sun behind the rocks on the left, making them fall into shadow, and then I remembered looking at the mountain wall to my right where the sun was blazing them to life. In my mind I saw a pano where the skies and landscapes would flip flop in terms of exposure from left to right/up/down and got excited to make an image.
There was a bit of haze, so the distance you could see was a bit limited. It was obvious that I needed to create a panorama, but I wanted that depth that you get from a clear day, so I thought carefully about the gear I would use. I planned on using a wide angle 18mm lens with a circular polarizer on the front, and my specially converted infrared camera. (I'll post another article about infrared shooting next)
I knew the polarizer would make any skies turn a nicer deeper blue and also cut down on some reflected light. I also knew that the infrared camera body (which only creates black and white images) would add to the deepening of the blue skies (resulting in deeper black for the B&W image) and it would also do a good job at cutting through the haze - allowing the camera to pick up more of the background than I could see by just standing there.
To make the image, I first spot metered the darkest and lightest areas that I wanted to shoot by zooming in on aperture priority mode, reeding the suggested shutter speed (stopped to f/11, ISO100), and then did a quick guesstimate on a setting that would retain detail in the highlights and shadows. I then switched into manual mode at 1/125th and began creating a pano. I started to the left and used the horizon line as a guide point while I clicked off each frame. I believe I shot about 12 frames total, but only used 6 to stitch the final image together. (It is always a good idea to overshoot far more than you believe you need with panoramic creations)
Once I got home I stitched the images together in Photoshop CC, did some minor editing to remove a few distractions, added a touch of dodging/burning to bring forth some detail in the shadows, then finished some minor exposure adjustments in Lightroom CC. It came out just like I had hoped! The backlit mountains on the left fell into darkness with the sun blazing the sky into brightness above, while on the right side of the frame the sun created a super bright mountain with dark skies above.
For more stories filled with camera settings and tutorials, check back for our next post!
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