Photoshop ethics

Snow or no Snow

Gear

Canon RP

24 - 105mm F/4

Tripod

Mac Book

Settings

IOS 400

33MM

F/11

1/4 SEC

Goal

Looking for an Inversion

Emphasis on the storm

I woke up before the sunrise to take my dog out and I noticed an unexpected layer of snow. I have heard from Page AZ locals that inversions can happen in this area in the winter when moisture is present. It has been a rather dry winter (2024/2025) so when I saw the snow and my free schedule I grabbed my camera gear and went hunting. An inversion is where clouds drop down low and high points in this case canyon walls poke through the layer of clouds. I was hoping to see Glen Canyon filled with clouds creating a river of atmospheric moisture between the red canyon walls with snow on the rim, however I think it was just a bit to warm for the snow to stick that close to the water.

In landscape photography particularly when chasing weather events it is rare that your plan will entirely come together. I decided to pivot my focus to the iconic Glen Canyon Dam and try to capture its imposing presence with the rare snow flurries that were present. Winter is quick in the desert and sometimes when trying to capture it you have to take what you can get.

It can be challenging to capture snow flurries, rain, or things such as light rays in camera. These small details in an image have a large effect on us in the moment. They causing us to get wet, feel the cold, or figuratively melt in the sun. Images that capture these details often have a stronger impact on the viewer. I would like to think viewers of my photography can imagine themselves in my shoes, I want my photograph to make you imaging the flurries hitting your face while looking down the sand stone cliffs upon the Dam. I tried to compact the image with my zoom to get more flurries in the image, I tried a fast shutter speed to freeze the flurries in place, I even tried to enhance what I capture in post, but none of these efforts made me feel like I was there again. This is when I turned to photoshop.

In photoshop I created fake flurries of all sizes and added them to the image. I think this is less pure of an image however it gives the viewer a closer depiction of what I was experiencing. I think adding elements to an image is a slipper slope to just creating digital garbage. My current ethic in regards to adding elements is similar to manipulating the exposure. elements that are already in the image can be enhances. It was snowing in the original but it was hard to see so I made more and increased the size. I think manipulating images in any regard is a personal preference and it is apart of photography being an art and now a science. Most of us shoot digital these days even though we all know taking a step back and shooting film would be the purest option but that not always what we want.