Mountain Waves
Grinnel Point reflecting in Swiftcurrent Lake at dawn.
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Image Of The Year 2016: 311491 - 326039
Our Natural World: 200742 - 203107
C...
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Grinnel Point reflecting in Swiftcurrent Lake at dawn.
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Image Of The Year 2016: 311491 - 326039
Our Natural World: 200742 - 203107
Clash Of The Lites: 451783 - 452882
Freshmen 2016: 89010 - 114361
Worldscapes: 121663 - 193329
Image Of The Month Vol 8: 30679 - 51966
Simple Landscapes: 23746 - 24806
Read less
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Image Of The Year 2016: 311491 - 326039
Our Natural World: 200742 - 203107
Clash Of The Lites: 451783 - 452882
Freshmen 2016: 89010 - 114361
Worldscapes: 121663 - 193329
Image Of The Month Vol 8: 30679 - 51966
Simple Landscapes: 23746 - 24806
Read less
Mar, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken from the shore of Swiftcurrent lake, just outside the Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA.Time
I got up before dawn and witnessed a truly lovely sunrise. Clouds stretched across the eastern sky, painted pink and orange from below as the sun climbed toward the horizon. Just after the sun rose I wandered over to the other side of the hotel to see the view to the west, and this is what I found.Lighting
For about fifteen minutes the sun was above the horizon and below the cloud layer to the east. This is the second of three stitched panoramas that I managed to capture before the sun moved behind the clouds and everything turned dull.Equipment
This was stitched from about three dozen exposure bracketed views, taken with a 35 mm prime lens on a crop sensor DSLR mounted on a tripod in portrait orientation. I captured one row with the camera angled down toward the lake, one row level, and one row angled up towards the sky, with a good amount of overlap (30% or more) between adjacent views to avoid parallax problems during stitching.Inspiration
My love of nature inspires me to capture as much of the detail as I can.Editing
I captured each view with three exposures, and stitched all the images of each exposure together using a free software package called Hugin. With Hugin, one can stitch one of the exposures carefully, and then automatically apply the exact same process to the others. The resulting images are pixel-aligned well enough to be blended. I used an HDR program called Photomatix to merge two of the exposures (the third was not needed) and then loaded the resulting tone-mapped image, along with the original light and dark stitched images, into layers in Photoshop. I adjusted (mostly contrast, brightness, and saturation) each of the layers and then, with the tone-mapped image in the bottom layer, selectively blended together the original stitched images. Since most of the resulting image comes either fully from the dark exposure or fully from the light exposure, the unnatural qualities that sometimes crop up in tone-mapped HDR are minimized, but the underlying tone-mapped image makes blending much easier in the transition areas. I have used this same process on many panoramas of scenes with more dynamic range than my digital camera can capture.In my camera bag
For nature photography I carry a heavy bag full of prime lenses: 14 mm, 35 mm, 100 mm macro. And I always bring a spare battery. 8-)Feedback
Special lighting can come and go quickly, so be prepared to work fast when it does show up. Because stitched panoramas require manual exposure, I always have automatic exposure bracketing turned on so that I don't have to spend a lot of time getting the exposure exactly right before shooting.
