The whole thing about travel photography is your time budget, you can’t be in all the places at golden hour or sunrise. So: we planned in advance where we wanted to be for the sunset and that’s where we got some amazing sunsets such as the arches but you couldn’t be everywhere at those hours so, planning is key! we planned to be in the antelope canyon mid-day which was best light for the Canyons to revel its vividness. Other times, I would focus on smaller details such as the running water where I didn’t have to reveal the harsh mid-day light. Each scene needed something extra or had unique circumstances to work through. My Equipment;   #Nikon Z9, Lisa shot with #nikon d850. My thought, carry one camera, travel light, carry one or two lenses, mine were #nikon24-200 which is what I used for majority of shots with the exception of #astrophotography, #lowlightphotography and if I needed less depth-of-field than the 6.3 aperture of the 24-200. For those shots, I fell back on my trusty #nikon24-70 with a max ap of 2.8.I did take a tripod but the only time I used it was for the night sky and low light work, the rest of it was handled with the platypod which fit in my bag very easily. In my Osprey oversized hydration bag, I could get the platypod, my water of course, two bottles of apple juice for negative sugar situations, two spare batterys for Z9. A #16mmfisheye when the 24 just wasn’t wide enough, This made my pack about 12 pounds which is about what I trained with on my 6 mile hikes preparing for the trip.  I feel like trying and staying is shape is a vital part of coming back with some great images, we didn’t have to worry about it twenty years ago when exuberance would carry us through. Thank about it…you have just hiked in 4 miles up the trail, your fighting your body with every step, are you really gonna pull your pack off, change lenses and gear back up, and continue shooting? not if your out of shape, I’m speaking from experience.

As far as my approach to the scenes, basic sense shooting, low ISO, shoot Raw, mostly small apertures since majority was landscape, and as a form of bracketing, I had HDR overlay turned on, set up for 3 shots that create a merged jpeg out of the three raw shots. the key here is keeping your raw shots with different exposures, because rarely does the cameras version of HDR suit me, even on low. Love shooting water and what a great way of practicing hand-holding a motion blur, and guaranteed to add drama to your water shots. Since we are creating our personal vacation book, we wanted the images to live and breathe within the parameters we had been given by nature and do the best we could to make the best out of every situation. We both shot about 6000 images, give or take, I am down to 1800 and still whittling on it, combining images and editing all at the same time. I have culled down most of my favorites and wanted to share with you, If you can’t tell from my writing I really enjoyed this 15 day excursion along with my #roadtripbuddies.

This is the last in a series of five blogs on our Epic Moab Vacation… back to reality and the Texas Heat!

#16mmfisheye, 24-200, antelope canyon, astrophotography, bracketing, golden hour, hand-holding a motion blur, HDR overlay, Landscape Photography, low ISO, lowlightphotography, Nikon D850, Nikon Z9, nikon24-70, Osprey oversized hydration bag, platypod, running water, shoot Raw, sunsets, tripod