At the bottom of Wall Street on Navajo Loop, an amazing Douglas fir reaches upward between massive walls of red rock. I had read on a web page that this tree was challenging to shoot because of the exposure difficulties—super bright in the sky, super dark down in the crevasse. For that reason, and because I don’t have a 4-stop graduated filter, any of the other filters that some of the old school film shooters recommended, or a fraction of their skills, I decided in advance on doing an HDR. This gave me the opportunity to spend some time learning how to shoot a picture like this.

In case you’re interested, here’s how I did this shot:

1. Slip and nearly fall several times on your way down the Navajo switchbacks. Luckily, on this stretch of the trail, your life is not in danger. Should you fall, you’ll be the subject of mocking and ridicule as you bounce past clutches of French tourists who make no effort to get out of your way, much less give you a hand. They’ll be offended if you splash red dirt onto their flip-flops, so avoid doing so.
2. Almost miss the tree as you walk out of Wall Street because you don’t have the presence of mind to look behind you. Cunningly pick up on the other hikers’ subtle cues (gasps and finger-points over your shoulder in the other direction).
3. Pause to rifle through your pack and find your Gorillapod.
4. Apprehend that there is no reasonably high base for your tripod. Set up on a low mound of loose rock at the edge of a wash and realize that while your Gorillapod is rated for your SLR and lens’s combined weight, the makers did not bear portrait orientation in mind unless you are shooting a pocket camera.
5. Desperately flail around with your Gorillapod until you have it at the angle you think you want. Be both upset and happy that you did not lug along your heavy Manfrotto.
6. Set your D300 for live view because there is no way you’re going to see through the viewfinder at its present height of four inches from the ground.
7. Rip the crotch in your shorts as you squat to peer at your view screen. You will go the rest of the day with a keen appreciation for underwear, so savor this.
8. Curse the fact that you have Old Man Eyes and can’t really see what’s on the view screen without your reading glasses. Assemble some vague notion of the composition and say thanks to Gary Weathers for showing you how to turn on the gridlines in your D300. These, even at this bad angle on the LCD, offer enough to give you an idea of the tree’s orientation so you can make those precise tweaks to your Gorillapod’s ball head.
9. Set bracket mode for nine shots, one-stop interval. With remote shutter release in hand, you’re ready to shoot.
10. Wait for several French tourists who have nearly stepped on your camera to get out of the way. They will pay you no attention, so do not bother trying to get theirs.
11. In continuous mode, fire nine times. Click-ClickClick-Click–Click—Click—-Click—–Click——Click.
12. Fold up the works and hope you got everything reasonably right.
13. Back at the trailer, merge the HDR image with the Photomatix plugin for Lightroom.