This week’s installment of Image of the Week; A Critique, titled Dark Rift, is a particular favourite of mine, that combines two of the greatest inspirations in my photography; weather and the Southwest United States.

Dark Rift, taken from the Terra gallery, is a perfect example of these influences in my work, and this specific piece holds a place in my heart due to being taken during a trip where I got to experience the wonderful Southwestern United States for the first ever time.

Some eagle-eyed people might recognise the geographical point where this photograph was taken, but for those who are unaware, it was a place called Dead Horse Point, close by Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah. The river deep in the canyon in the middle of lower half of the image is the Colorado River, which rises high in the Colorado Rockies, and eventually winds it’s way through the Grand Canyon on it’s long journey to the Gulf of California in Mexico. For the serious Geography geeks out there (of which I am one!), this is near to the confluence of the Green River. The aspect of view is looking South-East and is at the end of Highway 313 shown in the centre of the map below:

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Hot afternoon sunshine in the Southwestern US during July to September results in popcorn thunderstorms appearing like clockwork each and every afternoon. This time of year is dubbed the Southwest monsoon, since much of the year’s rainfall occurs in this period of time. Almost perfectly uniform from day to day, one could almost set their watch by them. Often, they rumble on into the evening before dissipating into the wee early hours. I imagine that from space, these thunderstorms would resemble a patterned rash across the landscape, such is there regularity. The amazing thing that typically differentiates these thunderstorms in the Southwest from the ones found in other parts of the USA, which are often in more humid circumstances, is that they usually form isolated from each other and not around frontal boundaries. Thus, the air around them is usually crystal clear lending the observer a wonderfully clear view of the structure of the storm cloud; for the landscape photographer, they cannot be more perfect a subject.

I remember the day this was taken very well. The previous evening, me and my travelling companion Risto had witnessed some amazing night-time lightning from similar storms whilst staying in nearby Green River, Utah. Our travel plan for this particular day involved moving onto Moab and ambitiously trying to take in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, all in one day. After reaching Dead Horse Point near to Canyonlands early in the afternoon, storms had started to build in timely fashion. In the 20 to 30 minutes prior to this photograph being taken, the storm cloud you can see had built from nothing more than a fair weather cumulus into a beautiful cumulonimbus cloud with trailing anvil and intense downdraft. Deep convection was fuelling this storm, and the instability within was resulting in frequent lightning bolts measured seconds from one another. The scale of this storm is difficult to comprehend from the ultra-wide angle of the photograph. Taken at 16mm focal length (after adjustment), the top of this storm is reaching well over 30,000 feet into the sky.

From a still photograph, it is hard to convey the speed at which this storm is travelling. Barely 10 minutes later, the thunderstorm was over the location where this photograph was taken…except I was not there. The frequent lightning and my exposure standing on the top of a cliff, as the tallest thing for miles around, meant I was not willing to stick around and view the structure from up close with the risk of being fried. The storm (and subsequent thunderstorms) also put paid to any meaningful exploration of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks; the lightning, hail, and heavy rainfall made the prospect too undesirable, and somewhat unsafe. However, just to capture this image made the ruined plans very much worthwhile.

Dark Rift is a perfect example of a digital photograph made to look analog, with cross processing effects very evident. I feel that the general aura and vibe of the landscapes of the Southwestern United States lends fantastically to the analog cross-processed look, or that akin to images taken on a Lomo or Holga with expired film, and this is the feel I wanted to convey in Dark Rift. This was achieved mainly by playing around with the color curves to get the desired hues, and a touch of contrast boost by squeezing the levels. As far as the results of this image, I am very pleased with how it came out, both in composition and effect. If I could change anything, it would be the amount of shadow in the foreground so that more of the landscape and Colorado River would be visible. However, that was largely out of my control given the shadow was caused by the clouds, and I didn’t rectify it at the time of taking the image using a gradient neutral density filter (and I typically hate to over post-process an image).

I hope this image conveys to the viewer a similar feeling of the beautiful loneliness and vastness of the interior Southwestern United States, as it does for me. My hope is that this photograph helps to inspire people to go out and seek the beauty in solitude.

Technical Details:
Aperture: f/9
Exposure Time: 1/250 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 16mm
Post-process: Curves, Levels, 81A Warm Filter, Crop