Saving Your Photos Wrecked by Smoke From Nearby Wildfires

In one of my great examples of bad timing, a friend and I headed to southern Utah a few days ago. We were aware of spreading wildfires in the eastern part of the state, but where we were going, SE Utah, things were reported to be good. 

My destination was Goblin Valley State Park, a bucket list destination I've always wanted to see. We stayed in nearby Hanksville, a charming Utah city with a population of around 200.

Morning 1 was mostly clear, so we got up before dawn. The ranger station was closed, but there was a machine that was happy to take my credit card.

Goblin Valley was all it was cracked up to be, and more, with a collection of hundreds of rocks shaped like distorted chess pieces, or, if you will, goblins. 

As the sun rose, the lighting was great, and just that dawn trip alone was very satisfying. I couldn't wait until sunset, but as we headed back to Hanksville, we saw some ominous clouds rolling in. It was smoke from the Cottonwood wildfire on the other side of the state. Within a few hours, Goblin Valley and Hanksville were covered with smoke. So much for the Goblin Valley sunset. 

My plan was to go further east and south, toward Arches National Park, also on my bucket list. The weather never improved, and you could barely see the sun through the dense smoke. Worse, ashes started falling out of the sky.

Arches is usually pretty busy, often with a line of cars to get in. Not that day. We drove right in as the guy at the ranger station shrugged when he said, "Have a nice day."

Our first stop was pretty depressing. The air was thick with smoke, with few shadows. Not quite the conditions I was looking for. 

As we drove, there were some lovely iconic scenes, but the smoke pretty much dampened my enthusiasm. Could these photos be saved in some way?  I wanted to try.

I knew what I wanted to achieve, but how to do it? I started with Adobe Camera Raw and gave Dehaze a try. It's a slider under the Effects menu. 

I had hardly ever tried the Dehaze control, but it was very effective at getting rid of much of the smoke. I took the Dehaze slider about 90% to the right. I also did a very slight color rebalance, to make up for the brownish color of the smoke.

No amount of Dehaze was going to restore the clouds, so I switched to Luminar Neo, which, in my view, has better sky replacement than Adobe. I have a collection of hundreds of skies taken at different times of day, so I chose something that looked to be right for the image I had. I also used the Luminar Neo Light Depth feature to make the light a bit more complex, in that the smoke was obliterating the shadows. One could also use radial gradients. If you want a deeper dive into this kind of work, Photographing the World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing walks through the full process. 

I felt the result was pretty good, given the image I started with. I could have used AI but wanted to preserve the landscape as it was, just putting back what the smoke was taking away. Is it perfect? No, the monoliths could be a bit brighter, but I had about 12 images from Arches that were pretty good, and without these edits I would have had nothing. 

Lessons learned:

•  Weather forecasts aren't always to be believed. 
• Smoky pictures can be overcome with a bit of work and thought.
• Our new digital tools give us a range of options we did not have even a few years ago.

I came out OK, even with the thick smoke, but my best time was before the smoke rolled in. Still, I did salvage the Arches National Park images. 

If you are a landscape photographer, Goblin Valley is a must stop. When we were there, we had it to ourselves. It was a great experience and a not-to-be-missed place to visit. Just don't go during wildfire season.