Gooseberry Mesa

Today’s photo is of the famed Gooseberry Mesa outside of St. George UT. I shot the image handheld with a Nikon D700 and 28-300mm VR II. I was just driving by on a mountain bike trip a while back, jumped out, shot the photo and off I went. Later I rode around the top of the mesa…one of my favorite mtb. trials of all time!

In terms of processing….

1) I applied a standard camera profile and lens correction in Lightroom 4.
2) Then I opened it up for editing in NIK SEP 2.
3) I applied the ‘full dynamic’ (harsh) preset
4) Burned the bottom edge.
5) Bumped up the fine structure in the clouds a bit.
6) Then used a few selective control points to shape the light on the mesas.
7) The I seleniumed it…I’m a sucker for selenium!

Here’s the before/after screen shots from Nik SEP 2.

Before

After