Canon 7D, Canon 24-105 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1-50 sec at ƒ/11, ISO 100

This is a quick-edit of what I think might be my favorite photo from my trip to Arches National Park. I’ve been working off of my laptop while I’ve been traveling (a three-year-old 13″ MacBook), and it doesn’t calibrate very well so once I get home I’ll be able to take a good look at all of my images and do some “proper” editing.

I used Lightroom 2 and Silver Efex Pro to editi this image. I photographed three exposures so I’ll also give it a try as a “realistic” HDR to try to bring back some of the details in the highlights and shadows. I’m also not sure if I want it color or B&W … although I am kinda liking the B&W version. Maybe I’ll post them both here on my blog once they’re edited. :)

The one thing I’m certain of is that I absolutely love it as a square crop. I actually framed it to be cropped this way while I was photographing it (I wonder what “anti-crop” people would say to that? Buy a Hasselblad? Lol). Here’s a quick thought … wouldn’t it be cool if we could switch our cameras to photograph in a 1:1 aspect ratio? Yeah, you can always crop your images (like I did here) but it’s all about seeing the image while you’re photographing it. When shooting video you get a semi-transparent matte that gives you a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio, and it records the movies that way. I think that camera companies should do the same thing for still images! :)

Another side note is that I’m really digging live view and the electronic level on my 7D for photographing landscapes. I used live-view for about 90% of my shots—the other 10% was when I was photographing stars and couldn’t see anything on the LCD monitor. After shooting all of these landscape images I’m realizing that the next lens I’m gonna buy will be a super-wide lens, maybe even a prime … but until then my 24-105 will have to suffice. :)