Storm Over Shoshone Point, Grand Canyon National Park, AZ. Black and white photograph

In 1995 I was photographing in Grand Canyon National Park for a black and white poster for the park. Shoshone Point is one of those amazing viewpoints which not many people are aware of. It is about a half mile off the highway via hiking trail. I waited for hours with my 4x5 view camera set up on a rock outcropping in hopes that the changing weather conditions would yield good image opportunities. It did. Within minutes of shooting this photograph, I also shot the image used for the National Park poster. Immediately after shooting this image it began to snow so I quickly packed up the camera and headed back to the car. This negative was a bit under-exposed and it requires some interesting masking work to achieve a very good luminous print. I used a shadow contrast increase mask (SCIM) in the dark mid-foreground area to enhance the local contrast and bring a crisp, lively feel to the shadowed mesa. I also used a fog mask to diminish the brightness of the foreground towards the bottom edge of the image. To achieve the necessary brightness of the sunlit ridge in the background, I made an inkjet dodge mask, with magenta color (to enhance local contrast) to accurately brighten the entire sunlit area and some of the snow clouds. I use this print as an example of masking techniques in my contrast masking workshops.