Glacier National Park is often referred to as "The Crown of the Continent." For great reason:
* some of the most erratic weather producing some of the most wild light you will ever see
* 175 of some of the sheerest mountain peaks reaching upward to nearly 11,000 feet
* 25 glaciers
* 762 lakes
* 563 rivers or streams
* over 1,012,837 acres at 1583 square miles
* 151 hiking trails
* 68 animal species from bear to moose
* 277 bird species
* 2,000 plant species
* 8 -Class A campgrounds with 943 sites
* 5 - Class B campgrounds with 61 sites
* 65 backcountry campgrounds with 208 sites.
In a word a photographers paradise to say the least. That is why it is absolutely one of my favorite places to shoot and take people. I already cant wait to get out there this summer again!
This image (similar to a couple of others I posted before) is Pray Lake adjacent to Two Medicine Lake on the East side, where I have literally witnessed many of the greatest displays of light in my entire life. This was one of them. Since I have shot this lake over 10 separate years, I decided this time to blow the peak of ridiculous sunrise color on a long exposure with a 9 stop solid ND and a polarizer, to create the streaking/averaging effect.
Tech stuff: the moon is blurred slightly from the 60 second exposure. For the print I will replace it with a sharper moon that was shot immediately after this image without the ND.
I used "Puppet Warp" to correct the distortion in the main trees as well as bring back the feel of the mountain peak, that the 24mm flattened out a bit.
The image is a double processed raw file using my unique and very powerful "Blend If" blending for dynamic range technique. (And yes, that article is coming. Sorry I have been so tardy in producing it. I have been working overtime, traveling and moving all at the same time over the last couple of months).
Lastly, reds are always the worst color management issue for web (in terms of accuracy). If you are on a newer, calibrated monitor (I calibrate to 2.2 gamma, 6500 white point and 120 candelas) and on Safari or Firefox it should be pretty close.
Wow! Absolutely breathtaking. With the filter it's an interesting contrast - it makes the clouds look so dynamic but the water looks so smooth. Love it!
Too beautiful for me to find words to describe my reactions, Mark.
Is it strange that I'd prefer the image without the moon?
But that's just an overpriced $.02 opinion .
Charlie
Love the composition, but I find the smoothness of both the water and clouds really clashing one another. The colours are too much for me...too much orange / purple in the scene.
chez wrote:
The colours are too much for me...too much orange / purple in the scene.
Thanks Chez. I don't want this to turn into a typical, drawn out, photographer discussion/argument about color management and all that, but I just looked at the image through IE and (as I assumed) it is a different world altogether on my monitor. As I mentioned above:
"Lastly, reds are always the worst color management issue for web (in terms of accuracy). If you are on a newer, calibrated monitor (I calibrate to 2.2 gamma, 6500 white point and 120 candelas) and on Safari or Firefox it should be pretty close".
This could be the culprit. Reds are always a pain in the yang, and rendered very differently on different systems.
I live in Montana but unfortunetly don't make it up to Glacier too much. But I go to Yellowstone 5-10 times a year. Glacier is a whole nother world though. I have a buddy who lives 5 minutes from the park so I'm going to go stay with him for a week and shoot this summer!
Pretty cool shot you have here. Since a vast majority of us are still using IE, maybe you should post two versions, one for IE and one for Firefox or whatever browser you are using? It seems like the reds are the biggest culprit, so maybe just a version where you desat the reds by 20% for us IE users?
Pretty cool shot you have here. Since a vast majority of us are still using IE, maybe you should post two versions, one for IE and one for Firefox or whatever browser you are using? It seems like the reds are the biggest culprit, so maybe just a version where you desat the reds by 20% for us IE users?
Jim
Here is one for Internet Explorer only. Or uncalibrated IE.
Overall saturation down 10 pts, and reds down another 20 pts in "color" mode (PS). On my monitor, IE is so far off I really wouldn't know what to do to get it accurate.
Again, on a newer monitor (I'm on a Dell Ultrasharp) calibrated to standard recommended settings (2.2 gamma, 6500 white point and 120 candelas - brightness) and on Safari (or Firefox) the first version should be close.
I too am calibrated to 2.2g, 6500 wp and 120c (Spyders recommendations) and on Safari and Firefox the original image looks great! The second version desaturated.
Yet as you mentioned, on Internet Explorer it looks extremely different, with the first image too saturated and the second more normal. Wow, what an enormous difference on different systems! What a pain reds are in color management as you said above! Thanks very much for the heads up on the sometimes vast differences.
Great shot and always looking forward to seeing more of your work.
I also love Glacier NP. For those who are not aware, global warming is rapidly changing the park. I was there for a couple of weeks last summer and the weather was actually hot for hiking in the middle of the day. A hundred years ago there were 150 glaciers in the park. I believe another was removed from the list this year and there are now 25 glaciers remaining. Most are expected to melt with the next 7 years.
If I had not already ordered a ND filter (due to arrive from BH on Monday) your image would have been enough to convince me that I need to try using long shutter speeds.
Let me also say I greatly appreciate your openness in sharing your techniques for capture and for processing. Thanks for sharing.
Viewing on Firefox and I REALLY like the first one. The second one does not seem to have the same stunning effect as the first one. It seems to be pale in comparison to the first one. Fantastic job!
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