My wife and second youngest daughter traveled to New Mexico with me this week. I am working the Festival of the Cranes starting tomorrow, but yesterday and today we are visiting old friends and old haunts from our 12 years as NM residents. All of our children were born in NM. Erin, the afore-mentioned daughter, was 2 when we moved so she does not remember anything of it. This is her first visit back since.

We spent a few hours yesterday hiking up Church Rock Canyon at Red Rock State Park, just outside Gallup NM. The trail has not changed much since we hiked it 25 years ago. It is still a beautiful little Canyon carved through the Chinle sandstone formation, with the weathered spires of Church Rock always hanging tantalizingly on the horizon. It was a perfect fall day for the canyon, cool enough to enjoy hiking, with just enough whispy clouds in the sky to add contrast to the HDR shots. 🙂

Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. 23mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using the new HDR Scene filter and the Detail tools. I find that in much HDR work, the blue of a deep blue sky is hard to manage in processing. The HDR processing tends to add a kind of light freckling to the blue, especially with this kind of whispy clouds. For my shots yesterday, after Snapseed, I opened them in Photo Editor, still on the tablet, and went over parts of the sky with a “Smart Blur” brush, to smooth away the freckles without losing the cloud detail.