Visiting old man winter for sunset

scole · November 25, 2008

Snows are finally accumulating in the mountains and I've been itching to get my feet on some snow. I decided to try something a little different for me and so I made my way to Welcome Pass for a day hike and set up for some sunset photos. Welcome Pass offers a prominent viewpoint for the entire upper North Fork Nooksack Valley including both Mt Shuksan and Mt Baker here in Washington State. It's somewhat of a punishing hike with 2800' of gain on switchbacks with an average grade of 15-22%.

It's a hike I've done before but only in the summer. Adding snow into the mix added some anxiety about following the trail but that all worked out. The views were tremendous but some steady COLD winds made it impossible to be exposed for long. I hunkered down by a rock and waited for the sunset lighting to take shape....

1. Hoar Frost at Welcome Pass

2. Panorama looking north from Welcome Pass. Tomyhoi Peak in the distance

3. Mt Shuksan and the upper North Fork Nooksack River valley as sunset begins

4. Mt Shuksan at sunset

5. Mt Baker and sunset

I actually had a difficult photo session. The temperature made it miserable and I had a REAL hard time capturing the light I was seeing in person. I've tried to salvage it through post processing on my RAWs as much as possible. Thanks for looking.

redleash · November 25, 2008

Kudos to you for your dedication to your craft! I like the colors in #3 the best, but #2 is what really got my attention. The slopes on the sides just draw me right into the scene--if I were a skier, I'd feel like making a downhill run into the bowl. Perhaps the real pros here will have comments about improving it, as there is some detail missing in the dark center. But I still like it!

pillman · November 25, 2008

Beautifully done and a photographers dream location..
These would be great candidates for HDR processing. Photomatix and
others give a 30 day free trial. Would love to see the results..

See link: free videos

http://www.thedigitalphotographyconnection.com/pfdp_player.php?ID=72

Abiciriderback · November 25, 2008

Very nice set looking at Mt. Baker yesterday from leaving the house in Marysville really wanted to make me take a trip back up there. I figured the winds would be howling pretty good.

Ray Still

scole · November 26, 2008

redleash wrote:

Kudos to you for your dedication to your craft! I like the colors in #3 the best, but #2 is what really got my attention. The slopes on the sides just draw me right into the scene--if I were a skier, I'd feel like making a downhill run into the bowl. Perhaps the real pros here will have comments about improving it, as there is some detail missing in the dark center. But I still like it!

Thanks Redleash. I wholeheartedly agree that more detail is needed in the valley below me. The processing has been difficult and I decided to leave the valley darker in order to keep a more natural sky and mountain scene (I'm not using HDR).

I appreciate the comments because I'm always intrigued about which photos resonate with people and why. The panorama you liked was actually a fairly quick shot sequence and the panorama is straight from the camera JPEGs. It's a bit funny to me because I took the photo of the hoar frost immediately before and I accidentally left my camera in manual focus for the entire sequence. Whoops.

scole · November 26, 2008

pillman wrote:

Beautifully done and a photographers dream location..
These would be great candidates for HDR processing. Photomatix and
others give a 30 day free trial. Would love to see the results..

See link: free videos

http://www.thedigitalphotographyconnection.com/pfdp_player.php?ID=72

Thanks for the link. I've downloaded the Photomatix trial and will take a look at it. You're absolutely correct in that these photos are good candidates but I'll be honest- I'm leary of HDR. It's not that it doesn't produce beautiul images; I just don't feel that the images produced are natural in appearance. Looking through the entire example gallery, the majority of photos there seemed like something straight out of Lords of the Ring. Beautiful and dramatic to be sure but not natural.

I hope I don't come across as snobbish. I want my photography to keep a natural appearance and it's just a personal choice. HDR isn't much different than dodging and burning from the days of film but for some reason, it gives me pause as an artistic tool...

roentarre · November 26, 2008

These landscape shots are in deed amazing!

redleash · November 26, 2008

Steve-

I just purchased Photomatix last night, after using the trial version. I really like it. I agree that it can create some other-worldly images and I have seen some real extreme ones on various sites. IMO, though, it can make some otherwise boring images look pretty cool. I plan to use it to create some obviously "artistic" looks, and to give a different treatment to some routine shots (such as some of the well-known buildings/landmarks here in San Antonio). If I need to punch up the color, etc. in shots I want to keep "real", then I won't use HDR.

If you haven't looked at pillman's shots, you should take a look. He has some nice ones!

If you decide to try your winter shots with HDR, I'll be anxious to see the results. Regardless, I still think #2 is a great shot!

Cheers,
Lauren

coscorrosa · November 26, 2008

HDR vs. Natural

scole wrote:

Thanks for the link. I've downloaded the Photomatix trial and will take a look at it. You're absolutely correct in that these photos are good candidates but I'll be honest- I'm leary of HDR. It's not that it doesn't produce beautiul images; I just don't feel that the images produced are natural in appearance. Looking through the entire example gallery, the majority of photos there seemed like something straight out of Lords of the Ring. Beautiful and dramatic to be sure but not natural.

I hope I don't come across as snobbish. I want my photography to keep a natural appearance and it's just a personal choice. HDR isn't much different than dodging and burning from the days of film but for some reason, it gives me pause as an artistic tool...

I'm digging that Shuksan shot (#4). I'm definitely going to have to steal this location when the snow has melted

Trying not to get sucked into the HDR debate but it's too late now!

What follows is just my opinion, and therefore, has a high probability of being incorrect, and an even higher probability of it being verbose; apologies in advance.

HDR and natural are not mutually exclusive.

Shooting in JPG is not more natural than shooting in RAW, but when you shoot in RAW, you're not letting the camera make any decisions for you, you can do it later in software.

The same holds for HDR.

In some (many) cases, the dynamic range/contrast ratio of a single scene is too great to capture within a single exposure. Instead of letting the camera decide what data (exposure values) are important, with HDR you defer that decision until later. There's no reason to throw away bits of information prematurely. Obviously, if you can get everything *you* want with a single exposure, or if the entire contrast ratio fits within a single exposure, then having more is just wasting your time (and disk space). However I'll often bracket even if I don't think I'll need to just to give me more flexibility later.

Your eyes record objects as they exist "naturally" (as does your camera sensor), but there's so much processing that goes on inside the brain, in fact, an overwhelming amount of the brain is dedicated to the processing of visual images, that what you "see" and what your eyes record are significantly different. For example, your brain optimizes for local contrast, so two things the same shade will appear differently if surrounded by dark vs. light shades, colors appear differently depending on their context, it's not purely related to wavelength. There are plenty of optical illusions out there that exploit these types of things. So what you see with your brain is not "natural" technically, it's just familar.

Most algorithms for converting from HDR to LDR (low dynamic range - suitable for display or print), often called "tone mapping" are modeled after the way the eyes and brain work, by optimizing for local contrast.

So I wouldn't dismiss the techinque as being unnatural (though there are plenty examples of that around, some of my own shots even - though usually intentionally!), and in many cases, the HDR->LDR conversion is actually a closer model of what your brain actually sees, this is why tone mapping algorithms can often work on a single exposure and produce good results.

And, obviously this is both a personal choice and a matter of personal taste, but I wouldn't try to place arbitrary restrictions like "natural" on any artistic medium, especially since "natural" is such a nebulous concept to begin with.

This doesn't mean it's OK to lie about the photo and say that a captive animal was really wild, or if you're a photo-journalist, to insert objects and people that weren't there, but if your ultimate ambition is to produce art and not documentation, then free yourself from the shackles of 'natural'

scole · November 27, 2008

I need to work with some properly bracketed images but here was my first attempt at HDR using one of the (RAW) images I posted previously:

I have admit that I like the results of this attempt. Now, I tried to work on a couple of the other photos and the results were not good. Given that this weekend's weather is supposed to be basically the same, I'm planning on going to somewhere similar and taking some bracketed series and experimenting with them.

Ron your description (or defense

) of HDR is quite good and reinforces things I've read elsewhere about HDR & the human eye. When I said that the HDR I have seen looks unnatural its because the person didn't "take their foot off of the gas"- I think they're overcooked. I might end up adding HDR into my library of tools but it's going to be used more for overcoming conditions like I experienced (and what you describe).

Who knows- after this weekend, maybe I'll become a HDR convert.

leaforte · November 27, 2008

Great shots. I like to take my dogs to Nugents Corner, on the north fork, whenever possible. Plenty of eagles on the north fork in the spring. Thanks for sharing.

Visiting old man winter for sunset

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