It’s been a little while since I had much time to be out doing some serious photography, so I decided to re-examine some of the photos that I took at Capitol Reef National Park on a trip with my wife, Sheri, last October.

I keep learning new things, and have recently purchased some new photo processing software, On1 Photo Raw Max. One of the very cool people I follow on WordPress, Leanne Cole, recommended the software. I have have been playing around a bit studying what it can do. (Much more than I know how to do yet.) Anyway, I wasn’t totally happy with some of my photos last year, so I thought that I’d take some of my new knowledge and rework a few of them.

So, if you asked me what was wrong with the original images that I posted previously, I would say that first, both days we were hiking it was really pretty cloudy; we were just lucky we didn’t get in the rain while we were on the trails. But, when I first processed the raw images, I think I was trying too hard to get the color balance “corrected” toward the daylight temperature. I just wasn’t quite as pleased with the feel as I had hoped. So, this time I made the color balance more like what I saw that day.

Also, as I mentioned above, it was really cloudy, but the light was such that the skies were too washed out. I really watched my exposures to avoid “blowing out” the highlights (making them so bright that there is no longer any detail – just pure white). But nevertheless, the skies in the photos just weren’t showing the cloud details that I was seeing while I was in Capitol Reef. So, using the On1 software, I was able to get the skies back much closer to what I was actually seeing those days. And I think that this added back more of the original feel of the photos – more like what I saw when I took them.

Well, I hope you like these new images. And I need to thank Leanne Cole for turning me on to a new tool. More stuff to learn, but that’s one of the things I love about photography. Thanks so much for taking time to visit my blog. Autumn is around the corner, so go have fun out there!