The Watchman

ISO: 100  Focal Length: 15mm 

Aperture: f/6.3  Shutter Speed: 1/50

Filter: Lee 0.9 GND Soft Edge

Shooting the Watchman with the Virgin River is one of Zion's iconic shots. I didn't want to make my shot like what most people were doing so instead of shooting from the road I wandered down the Pa'rus trail a little bit until I found this spot. It was nice because I was the only photographer there and when I walked back to the road there were probably 15-20 photographers cleaning up. I used a little lower aperture number than I would normally use because I didn't like how my shots were turning out with the water blurred. The Lee GND was key for this shot and it really helped balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. Lining up a GND is pretty easy. I handhold my filters. To start I hold the filter against the lens with the dark part of the filter completely out of the frame and then while looking through the viewfinder I slide the filter down until the transition between light and dark is against the horizon.

When I got this shot into the computer I still thought the exposure wasn't balanced like I wanted it to be. So I loaded the single RAW file into HDR Efex Pro and tone mapped it. At first the result was WAY too strong so I dialed back the settings by about half in order to get a realistic result. I came away being very pleased with the shot. 

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Subway

ISO: 100  Focal Length: 28mm 

-.33 ev

Aperture: f/13  Shutter Speed: 2.0s

The Subway is one of Zion's most famous places and it is also one of the top sites for photography in the park. Although it is so famous there are usually few people around because it is a very long hike in and the traffic is limited. The hike is about 10 miles round trip and is very strenuous. If you want to do the hike you will need to reserve a Zion backcountry permit. The hike is a bit technical and for the most part there is not a well defined trail. You basically follow the river once you are down in the canyon.

After about 5 miles of hiking you will get to the Subway portion, which is actually quite short. It is named for the tunnel like formation of the cliffs, see the image at the bottom of the post.

The image with the pools was a pretty straight forward composition. I wanted the lowest pool to be in the lower third of the picture to add foreground interest. The cascade of pools provided a great sweeping line that gives the image depth.

As for the more technical details of the shot, I had a polarizer filter on my lens and chose the small aperture of f/13 so I could get the long shutter speed that would give the water a very smooth look. For post processing I took down the highlights a little, gave saturation a slight bump and sharpened it for the final result.