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Cerro Torre - Argentina, Patagonia
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Cerro Torre - Argentina, Patagonia



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After almost 3 hours of hiking with all the gear on our backs, we were presented with this dramatic sunset, with clouds burning up almost like the mountains wer...
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After almost 3 hours of hiking with all the gear on our backs, we were presented with this dramatic sunset, with clouds burning up almost like the mountains were spewing lava. This is a 7 vertical exposure stitched panorama, each built off a 3 exposure HDR.

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cameraCanon EOS 5D Mark II

settings Aperture f/16 ISO 100 Shutter 2/1 Focal Length 16/1 

upload_dateDec, 2015

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6 Comments |
hisnameisflorian
 
hisnameisflorian January 22, 2016
amazing picture!!
acseven
acseven January 22, 2016
Thanks so much, Florian!
TravelBugDove
 
TravelBugDove June 19, 2016
Stunning!
David_Blakley_Photography Platinum
 
David_Blakley_Photography November 25, 2016
Such a peacefully serene scene. Excellent mastery of the photographic arts.
acseven
acseven November 25, 2016
Thank you for you kind comment, I appreciate it.
Lyons791
 
Lyons791 November 25, 2016
Amazing shot!
acseven
acseven November 25, 2016
Thank you!
iandsmith
 
iandsmith January 22, 2017
Just the sort of shot you hope to get when you go hiking! I'm envious.
jamiesarkett
 
jamiesarkett January 31, 2017
Breathtaking

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Tags

#travel #landscapephotography #panorama #argentina #southamerica #america #patagonia #sunset
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Behind The Lens

Location

This panoramic landscape photograph was taken in the Argentinian Patagonia region, more specifically at Laguna Torre. The far away mountain peak is Cerro Torre, a very well known natural feature in Patagonia, reaching over 3 km (~2 miles) high. The hike from the nearest mountain town - El Chaltén - took around 3 hours at a moderate pace. We started off slightly after lunch, to get there a few hours before the sunset. We then stayed there through dusk and headed back during the night, pitch black, which was kind of fun.

Time

This image in particular was captured by sunset, as you can tell by the brightly coloured lit clouds. Many of the days I spent in Patagonia ended and begun with this kind of impressive scenario: the Sun casting warm or hot red light rays on scattered clouds with ethereal forms, stacking up at different layers in the sky.

Lighting

A couple of things come to mind when thinking about the lighting of this image, the superb sky light show in the sky and the not so easy to manage backlit mountains, where no direct light was being cast. The sky was just amazing, a lot better than what I could have imagined and it was fiery for quite a while, long enough for me to make a lot of exposures to be used in the final panorama. Of course that the Patagonian clouds contribute immensely to the lighting- this almost looks we are looking at some kind of volcanic activity coming from those mountains and the overall tones make the photograph work as a panorama. The other significant part of the lighting, the backlit mountains, were the tough one to manage, for two reasons. One issue is the darkest areas' size relative to the frame; for me, the second mountain to the left is actually somewhat larger than what it should be when considering geometry only in an optimal composition. On the other hand, that larger size makes Cerro Torre actually more interesting to the eye because of its apparent smaller size (which is definitely not!) and particular pointy shapes. The second issue is handling the underexposed noisy signal of the exposures. It was obvious that it was going to be very tough to make the panorama work with such large areas with low quality or little information in the image, so I decided to try and take three exposures for each alignment.

Equipment

I was using my previous main body, a Canon 5D Mark II with a EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens, mounted on a sturdy Manfrotto tripod. As most of the subjects of interest were relatively far away from the camera, I wasn't expecting much trouble with creating a stitched panorama

Inspiration

Most photographs of this location focus on either the far away Cerro Torre peaks or the floating icebergs, which weren't too near in this case. Is spent a few hours before trying to find interesting compositions that I could use when sunset was up, but none was considering a panorama because of the very dark backlit mountains. When the Sun begin to lower below the [not in view] horizon the colours started to pop out, and that's when I realised that there was this huge expanse of colourful subject in the sky that could make an awesome panorama. If the wind wasn't as strong it would have been a stellar shot with the reflections, but the exposures were long enough to somewhat blur out the wading water and simulate a blurred out effect.

Editing

The photograph undertook a good deal of post-processing, there was no other way around it. As usual with my landscape photography, I don't get into luminosity masks or burning/dodging, and instead just stick to overcoming technical issues. The first part of the work was the geometric distortion corrections using the lens profiles, then merging the three exposures for each one of the seven positions I had rotated the camera through. With those HDR done, I stitched them up and fixed a few panorama parallax issues on the nearest object (the rock). After that was done it was time to develop the final image into what you can now see. So, it wasn't straightforward, but it still kept the photograph as true to the moment as possible.

In my camera bag

I carry different gear considering what I am doing, but in this case I was carrying two DSLR bodies, three lenses (16-35mm f/2.8L II, 24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/4L), the Manfrotto tripod, a lot of accessories and gear for light hiking.

Feedback

Following up on what I mentioned earlier, I find it of the utmost importance to spend some time planning and researching about the locations I am about to visit, and browsing through some of the work made by top professionals is key in my process. It helps to know about the lighting conditions, optimal compositions and the overall environment. I use all of this information to try my best to stay clear of what others have done before, even if it is such a popular location as Laguna Torre. In this case, I was particularly happy with the end result, a lot more than what thought I could when I was in the field. On this note, my advice is to practice your skills by mimicking other photographers' work, but when you're ready to create your own images, try to look at your subjects with a different point of view.

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