Freezing + Patience = Good Photo.

Hey everyone!

I wanted to share with all of you a photo I made the other night. We got a chance to go up to Airport Mesa, which overlooks most of West Sedona under that shadow of Thunder Mountain. My goal was to create a 5-exposure HDR shot at sunset. Unfortunately, the temperature was quickly falling, combined with the wind from being up so high. (FYI: Sedona is about 4500 ft. above sea level) My friends Jamie and James from Phoenix came up to visit for a couple days and nobly braved the cold with me. We waited until sunset (around 5:30PM) and I let the sky go mostly dark over a course of 30 minutes before starting to shoot. Perfect exposure for the HDR was 200 ISO, f4, at 1.6. I took a series of 5 shots about every 2 minutes to get the best range in color for the sky, and after a little contrast and sharpening adjustments in PS, this was the result.

Chris was right, I'm going to be spending quite a bit on canvas me thinks... This is by far one of the most photogenic cities I've ever been to. It's certainly a must-see for anyone, and especially for landscape photographers. I'll be posting more from the trip soon, but thought you'd all get a kick out of this one.

-Steve