We arrived at the Grand Canyon late in the day. It was autumn, the sun was going down, and there wasn't much time to think about setting anything up. I took the photograph while the light was still there.
The colours were extraordinary. They were so bright that the scene looked almost unreal, more like something you might expect to see on Mars. That was what it looked like, but I wondered whether someone seeing the finished photograph would believe it.
The first edit was simple: crop the image and correct the horizon so it sat level. Then I opened it in Luminar Neo, an AI-based photo editor, and backed the colours and brightness off a little. I also lifted the shadows. I wasn't trying to make a duller version of the scene. I wanted the photograph to keep the feeling of that sunset while looking closer to what people might accept as real.
Sometimes editing means resisting the urge to turn everything up. In this case, the light had already done that for me.
The Grand Canyon panorama is now available as a canvas in the LuPa shop.
I used Luminar Neo for this edit.
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