This is an 5-frame HDR composite of Teardrop Arch in Monument Valley. I used a 24-105mm lens set to 32mm, and I had to use a small lens aperture to insure complete depth of field. In my opinion, landscape photos, virtually without exception, require everything to be sharp. We take landscapes because of their beauty, and beauty comes from the sharp detail. Usually I prefer sunrise, sunset, or overcast lighting for images like this, but the mid-afternoon illumination just worked in this case. The contrast in this image looks like I saw it -- but what came out of the camera was very different. It was contrasty and unattractive because digital sensors aren't as sophisticated as our eye/brain combination in maintaining good exposure in both the highlights and the shadows. That's why I had to do HDR -- to bring the contrast back to how it appeared to me at the time. My settings were 1/80, f/16, and 320 ISO.
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