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The West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon was on my 'must visit and photograph seriously' list of places that I had compiled before my wife Liz and I set off on our holiday to Arizona. I had seen an inspiring photo of this place on Alain Briot's website here, and I knew we had to see this for ourselves.
Well we weren't disappointed! The West Fork of Oak Creek is a canyon hike that takes you along the river for about 4 miles in one direction, and 4 miles back again, passing through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever come across.
With soaring sandstone walls, lush vegetation, impossibly sculpted rock features and the creek itself this place is a visual wonderland with a fresh delight around every corner.
The location shown in these photos is near the start of the hike, and is one of the most beautiful and unusual places on the trail (but there are plenty of others too)!
To photograph it sucessfully though required several different exposures to cope with the contrast range between the lit and shadowed areas of the composition, but it was well worth making the effort.
This image was taken on the return leg of our hike, later in the day with the sun now obscured by high cloud. The image you see here was produced from three separately exposed RAW files, converted to a 32bit HDR file in Photomatix Pro and then optimised for colour and contrast in PhotoShop.
Filename - sandstone trees river 05.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 32mm
Exposure - 2secs @ f16, ISO100
Location - Sedona, Arizona
This image - 800x640px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movement.
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