I mean, here we are in Winter of 2024 and I am sitting in my room minding my own business end editing a few videos for work… Then I take a look outside and I see what I can only describe as a dooms day event going on ! Top 10 of the most beautiful red sky eventsI have ever seen in my life … The sun setting almost fully, and the rays hitting it from an angle that causes them to be just perfect. Add to that scene a beautiful old church, some trees, and a few birds, and boom, you have magic. But all the detail could be easily lost if it is a bit too far from you, so this is where we go back to our original statement. You can be the judge yourself and tell me in the comments.
The Arsenal
At the wide side of things and for that 70mm focal length, I went with Canon EF 70-200 F4L IS USM lens ! This is a classic lens, but it still performs beautifully, and with a Canon EF to R Adaptor you can and the circular polarizer.
The 2nd lens I used was the Sigma 150-600.. But this is a bit tricky to carry around and you can easily mess your shots up due to weight. I mean, talk about heavy … 1.8Kg of lens ! Add the weight of the Canon R6 of almost 700grams and you have the weight of a healthy human new born! But in the world of super tele-zooms this is quite a LIGHT option and bird shooters will probably be laughing that I consider this heavy !
Post Processing
My go to editing software has always been Adobe Lightroom and I absolutely love the process of editing the photos individually even though it can be done 100x times quicker with AI these days. You can use built-in presets or edit the details as much as you want to, and this is where I LOVE Adobe. I get to become a digital artist and just enhance the photo as I wish. The before after can be significant, or minimal ! It’s really up to my creative mindset at that moment and I love the abstract style that resulted from this session.
I just love playing with the individual bits and pieces of the highlights, shadows, colors, and curves to find the version that I absolutely thing represents that moment best. That is something AI can’t ever produce and I will always know this was my own magical touch and creative juice that made this work. I must say that out of box the photos look great from the R6 and are absolutely gorgeous but the edit of the RAW files gives me the ability to insert emotions into the scene. i really love the highlighting of deep red and the sci fi mood it gives out.
70 Mega Pixel Super Panorama
Of course whenever I see a landscape like this, we come to one of my favorite photography methods. That is the vertical panorama consisting of 6 to 8 shots taken in portrait mode and while each shot covers 30% of previous shot and then stiching them together in LightRoom (after each individual shot is edited and denoised). This creates a highly detailed shot of each portion of the shot as you fill the sensor with those beautiful details. If you happen to have super ultra wide monitor, these will make perfect backgrounds and you can create your own unique set as well.
I hope you enjoyed this blog and learned something new… Next time I will share some beatiful Auroras from Tampere.
For now here is a quick tutorial on this Vertical Panorama technique from if you want to try this:
Pouya Lucky 