Badlands National Park thumbnails only

While badlands may be bad for farming and inhabiting, they are awesome for photography. Late spring brings the storm season to Badlands National Park, and the clouds associated with stormy weather bring the sky color that makes landscape photographers drool.

I can't think of any scenarios I like better than the sun shining under heavy cloud cover immediately before setting. The flat prairie often provides very late in the day ultra-warm, direct sunlight, which was the case this evening.

With a close foreground and a very distant background, this scene called for the use of the Canon EOS R5's focus shift feature.

A very high (100) number of images setting was selected, indicating that the camera should create sharpness until infinity. The closest subject in the frame was focused on, and with the press of the shutter, the R5 determined that two frames were adequate for this 15mm f/11 capture. The Depth Compositing tool in Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP) merged the two images.

In this case, some soft areas remained in the seams in the lower left and lower right regions of the merged image. A Photoshop overlay using a small portion of the sharp foreground image corrected this issue.

With air-to-ground lightning strikes averaging under 10-seconds apart, this thunderstorm was awesome.

After dark, lightning becomes easy to photograph. Mount the camera to a tripod, frame a composition that includes the location with the most frequent lightning, focus to a long distance, set the aperture and ISO to control the lightning and overall image brightness, and then open the shutter long enough to catch at least one strike. Easy is to use 30-second exposures controlled by the camera (the strategy implemented for this example), but the Bulb setting controlled with a remote release enables the exposure timing to be adjusted as desired. For example, lock the remote release button down until there is a strike or the time duration exceeds the tolerance for long exposure noise.

Make safety a priority. Photographing lightning from a safe distance (far away) is advised. Locations with long distance visibility are advantaged in this regard, and the flat midwest prairie gets impressive thunderstorms.

Along with this storm came wind, wind strong enough create significant camera vibrations with even a sturdy tripod and strong enough to put a significant amount of dirt in the air. The solution to this issue was to drop down into the canyon a bit. The difference in wind speed 25 yards (25 m) down from rim was substantial and a solution to the problem.

Right, the title says four minutes, but a 30-second shutter speed was in use. This image is a four-minute exposure created by blending eight 30 second exposures using the "Lighten" layer blending option in Photoshop. This blending option is simple to use, allowing the lightning strikes from the layers below to show through.

As usual, the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-70mm F2.8 L IS Lens performed impressively on this shoot.

The foreground lighting in this Badlands National Park Milky Way image is courtesy of a pair of Simorr Vibe P96L RGB Video LED Lights on Manfrotto Befree Advanced Travel Tripods.

Even at their lowest intensity settings (1%), half the light face required gaffer tape to bring the overall light balance down to Milky Way levels.

Post-processing of this image primarily involved peripheral shading correction and increasing the contrast of the foreground and background independently.

You don't leave when the sun sets, do you? Usually, the best show is yet to come when the fiery ball goes below the horizon.

With primarily flat ground outside of Badlands National Park, the sun is not blocked by tall nearby mountains when the sun is at a low angle. This scenario bodes extremely well for sunrise and sunset sky color, creating an above-average percentage of great opportunities, especially during the storm season.

Sunrises and sunsets can be seen nearly anywhere, and they are often beautiful — highly photogenic. But, having a great foreground can give sunrise and sunset images an additional positive element, and when you are somewhere special, make your images show that place.

My least favorite foreground element is a power line. My most favorite foreground element is a glassy reflective lake or pond. However, a mountain with character ranks just behind that favorite. So when it became apparent that the skies would light up after sundown this evening, I headed for such a mountain.

Upon arrival on the scene, the first task was to set up a Canon EOS R5 with an RF 15-35 mounted with an also interesting close foreground. With exposure duration bracketing established for later HDR compositing, getting the time of day bracketed was the remaining key for this camera's capture. Pressing the shutter release frequently (using the 2-second self-timer) took care of the latter goal.

As this scene's primary intrigue seemed to be the incredible sunset color fronted by the gnarly character of the Badlands mountain, a panorama capture was calling me. The Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens mounted on another R5 was the perfect option.

The first task was to establish a manual exposure. The scene brightness varied significantly throughout the proposed pano, promising a range of auto exposures that would increase the stitching challenge later. This manual exposure was established by pushing the red channel, much brighter than the green or blue, against the right side of the histogram.

After autofocusing on the mountains (I depend on the R5's excellent AF accuracy), the AF/MF switch was moved into the MF position. Having all images focused at the exact same distance eliminates any focus breathing issues for panorama stitching.

The image captures ensued. The camera was rotated from left to right, capturing vertically orientated images with at least 1/3 scene overlap between frames (more like 50% overlap, which was overkill). The frames were captured in quick succession to reduce cloud movement and sky brightness change between the frames. The viewfinder grid was used to keep the images vertically aligned. Upon pressing the shutter release, the height of the horizontal grid line was noted against the background and maintained as the camera was panned.

When quickly capturing frames handheld, it is easy to rush the shots and end up with blurry images. Ensure that the camera is still for each gentle press of the shutter release (with a slight lag to the release of the press — a follow-through of sorts) to ensure sharp images. A tripod works best for this task, but that support was under the RF 15-35 mentioned above, and there was not enough capacity to bring two tripods on this trip (my preference). The RF 100-500 and R5 coordinated IS were not stressed by the 1/100 second shutter speed and delivered a 100% sharp image rate.

I mentioned that the exposure was established to protect the red channel. That exposure provided a dark foreground. While the foreground needed to stay dark for a natural balance, making foreground details slightly visible seemed a good idea. Taking advantage of the R5's dynamic range, the original frames were processed brighter. Note that the brighter foreground is much easier to see in a larger version and with a darker background.

Photoshop's Photomerge feature with "Reposition" selected created the pano from 16 source images. Unfortunately, that PS feature created a slightly different resulting image from the brighter-processed source files than from the darker ones. Creating 16 HDR images to use for the stitching source seemed too much work (and likely prone to additional differences), so the foreground pano was manually position-adjusted where it did not properly align. A small area of the sky was processed slightly darker and blended into position. The final images measure over 300 megapixels. For improved display on devices, the image was cropped on the right side, with a sense of balance used to establish where the right side should be.

Do you leave room for words?

Leaving room for words is a great excuse to pull out when focal length limited, so be sure to keep that answer ready for when the situation dictates. However, many uses for photos, especially paid uses, involve adding words.

If the subject fills the frame, overlaid words can appear awkward, with subject lines and details competing with the message. Leaving space, especially strongly blurred space, permits aesthetic message presentation.

I create invitation cards for an annual sportsman's banquet. While wildlife portrait images are plentiful in my collection, message-ready images are less so, and I've been working on changing that balance.

For this bighorn ram image, a relatively long subject distance, very distant background, long focal length, wide aperture, and low shooting position combine to provide adequate smoothly blurred space for inclusion of a message.

It is usually easier to be farther away from an animal but don't let the distance lower the quality bar. Many of the same factors important to close portraits still apply. Look for good light and body position — and spectacularly large horns are advantageous.

We encountered this big boy in Badlands National Park. Observation showed that he was eating the yellow flowers. Moving into position for the next flower patch made preparation easy.

Heatwave distortion is frequently encountered when shooting at long subject distances in direct sunlight. The solution here was to shoot many images at a fast frame rate. Periodically, a photo with a sharp sheep head was captured.

In June, at this latitude, there is not much time between sunset and sunrise. However, at this time of the year, in this location, there are few sunrises and sunsets worth sleeping through.

While driving at a high rate of speed (as permitted by the high posted speed limit on I90) toward the park this morning, I could see the beautiful sunrise color begin to show in the sky and feared being too late. Fortunately, that fear was unfounded.

Near the end of a narrow ridge, the camera could be positioned to capture just the end of that ridge, helping to emphasize the dramatic depth. The 15mm focal length was ideal for this big scene.

The Canon EOS R5 and Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens made this exposure-bracketed capture easy. However, ensuring that the blend between the sky and foreground was void of bright or dark edges while HDR stacking was a bit more challenging. With the foreground carefully separated from the background (in Photoshop), and its brightness reduced by a stop, there is plenty of latitude for changing my mind in a month or 5 years.

While this site's white background is perfect for product photos, it is a touch harsh for sample pictures. Head over to my portfolio site for a larger image on a darker background, a combination that improves especially this image's appearance.

Among the interesting subjects in Badlands National Park are the shadows created by water erosion channels.

While sunrise and sunset are easily my favorite times to photograph in this park, those times of the day do not provide light on some of the great subjects. A higher sun is necessary to light the depths of the canyon. Higher, though not fully overhead as that light often erases the shadows.

I often talk about wide-angle focal lengths being useful for emphasizing an interesting foreground in front of a vast attractive background, with all details in sharp focus. This scene provided that combination, and the perspective captured by the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens at 15mm was ideal for this photo.

Well, ideal until I decided that more sky might be a nice addition. The clouds were attractive, and it seemed advantageous to sometimes capture a picture of mostly sky to enable stitching later. In the end, the selected to share photo seemed best with the sky image stitched in.

Badlands National Park has the full deal for landscape photography — interesting foregrounds in front of incredible backgrounds. Mix those features with the warm light from a rising (or setting) sun, and great results are waiting.

With the extremely warm light hitting the red-colored rock, the red channel is the one to watch. Make that channel too bright, and the red details will be lost. Use the RGB histogram to monitor exposure levels, and having an understanding how far your camera's red channel can be pushed is helpful.

While there were a few lenses in the backpack this morning, the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens was the only one to see use. This lens on the R5 produces outstanding results and is an ideal choice for landscape photography.

In this camera position, the sunlight angle made own-shadows a bit of a problem. So I hid in the shadow of a land formation during the image capture, and the tripod shadow was removed with the healing brush tool in Photoshop.

I had to go back for a second attempt.

Just outside of Badlands National Park is the small town of Wall, SD. Wall is best known as the home of the massive roadside attraction Wall Drug Store.

Describing the Wall Drug Store is beyond the scope of this post but calling it unique is a vast understatement.

Inside, the narrow Wall Drug traveler's chapel seemed inviting to the Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM Lens's ultra-wide-angle view, and I spent a few minutes capturing it.

I had this image queued to share, and as I was preparing the post, I realized that the room was not squared in the frame. I had carefully leveled and centered the camera during the capture and didn't otherwise pay much attention to that aspect of the image while processing it.

With that realization, I was no longer satisfied with the image. Considering the age of the building, I even wondered if the problem was caused by the structure itself. A quick search of other Wall Chapel photos shows similar crookedness.

Still, I was bothered. So, a second attempt was made a year later.

This time, I was acutely aware of the first attempt's shortcomings, and while the second attempt's results were better, I still wouldn't call them perfect. Photoshop to the rescue.

This image required HDR compositing due to the bright lights and stained glass windows. Layer opacity adjustments handled that task for this image.

A heavenly light directs the eye to a pair of bighorn sheep ewes standing guard over a bedded lamb on top of this Badlands National Park ridge.

I was photographing the large thunderhead moving in when these bighorn sheep showed up. Then the cloud opened just wide enough to put a spotlight on the sheep.

I love it when wildlife photography and landscape photography combine.

I added a new turkey image to the collection this year. While exploring Badlands National Park with a workshop group, we found a Merriam's gobbler strutting in a tree.

The unusual behaving turkey cooperated long enough for everyone to shoot him.

For that small thing, I give thanks, and today is the day that those of us residing in the USA are celebrating our "Thanksgiving" holiday. As you probably guessed from the name, we set aside this day to give thanks for our abundant blessings (and eat lots of food, often including turkey). While thankfulness should be a perpetual state of mind, this day can give that spirit a significant boost.

Always near the top of my thankful list is you. The support you have provided over the years has made developing this site possible and for that, I'm very grateful.

My family and I wish you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving!

The Yellow Mounds make all the Badlands National Park top photography locations lists. They are beautiful, intriguing, and worthy of their position on those lists.

However, creating great images that include these mounds is not easy. Of course, lighting changes everything, and dramatically reducing the image quality challenge on this day was natural spotlighting that, incredibly, illuminated the feature highlights of this scene.

As is often the case, the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens combination was outstanding for this landscape photograph. The RF 24-105 is relatively compact, has an excellent general-purpose focal length range, consistently produces impressively sharp images, and was my primary lens for over two weeks in this park last year.

Briefly, the Badlands National Park skies produced a nice show this evening, complete with the clouds seeming to match the ground texture. While I like the photo, the experience was even better.

See the sheep standing on the leftmost peak? We were in location for the sunset photo when this bighorn sheep ewe showed up on the ridge immediately to our right.

Then, it ran down the side of the cliff and ran up the one it is shown on. The sheep's ability to navigate the steep, slippery terrain at speed is incredible.

Experiences like these happen when you spend time in the right places. A second sheep is bedded on the tall peak close to the center of the image, and two more are walking between the two. Also impressive is that all four sheep stood still for a one-second exposure.

The optically impressive Sony FE 12-24mm F2.8 GM Lens got the call for this sunset. With clouds covering most of the sky, the odds of good sunset color were low. However, that scenario meant the entire sky could light up brilliantly, and I wanted ultra-wide angles of view ready to capture as much color as possible.

A small opening in the clouds created a light show that made 12mm a highly welcomed option. The Sony Alpha 1's ultra-high resolution makes the distant sheep easily recognized when the image is viewed large.

Bighorn sheep are common in Badlands National Park, but I don't see rams this big so frequently.

The key to capturing this image was observing that the ram was eating the yellow flowers. While eating, the ram's head was primarily down, not my favorite position. Positioning to capture the ram leaving one harvested patch on its way to another yielded a selection of head-up poses.

Getting the 600mm and f/4 combination down low on the flat grasslands creates a strongly blurred background.

Heatwave distortion was a problem during this capture, but shooting many images at a fast frame rate provided an adequate number of sharp results.

Cliff swallows flying around their community nesting sites appear to be in chaotic synchronization. While birds are flying everywhere, each seems to accomplish its task, arriving at and leaving their mud nests.

Today's question answered is, do cliff swallows ever collide? Until now, I would have answered "No." However, I was wrong, and this image makes the question rhetorical.

Photographing the cliff swallow chaos in Badlands National Park was a huge challenge, and the keeper rate was low. Aligning the lens into the area where hundreds of birds were approaching and hitting the shutter release as soon as one entered the frame was the technique deployed for this capture. The Canon EOS R5's impressive subject detection and tracking capabilities were relied on for focusing.

Capturing a pair of cliff swallows large in the frame during a mid-air collision with a supporting juxtaposition of blurred birds was a gift.

I've probably purchased a Canon 24-105 F4 L IS Lens a dozen times. This series of lenses, including the Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Lens, and Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens, are professional-grade, high-performing, relatively compact and lightweight, and affordable. That combination, along with the versatile 24-105mm focal length range, make these lenses ideal for many uses, including family, travel, and hiking.

So, why do I keep rebuying them, aside from the new models becoming available? Well, I try to keep the kit trimmed to the gear that is most important to me. I sometimes shoot moving subjects in low light, such as at indoor events, and in these scenarios, an aperture wider than f/4 is desired. Thus, there is always a 24-70mm F2.8 L lens in the kit.

With a significant general-purpose focal length range covered, it seems that 24-70mm lens should be adequate for all needs. When there is some time space since the last 24-105 F4 need, the 24-105 gets sold to finance seemingly more important needs.

Then, a need arises that reminds me that I really do need that lens, usually for its size, weight, and focal length range, and I re-buy it. And, the story repeats – more often than it should.

The second Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens arrived in my kit earlier this year. With some long hikes on the schedule, the need for this lens again became apparent. I bought it to keep this time (unless I forget the reasons again), and it performed impressively.

One location that the RF 24-105 was perfect for was Badlands National Park.

Few elements make a prairie more photogenic than a good storm with a rainbow, and the first thing I grab when a rainbow shows up is a Breakthrough Photography circular polarizer filter.