Tad Gielow Photography

Mount Rainier National Park In The Rain And Snow

Mount Rainier –National Park In The Rain And Snow

My wife and I were planning a road trip from our home in Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington to spend a few days visiting our daughter.   On my itinerary was a day photographing in Mount Rainier National Park with the goal of visiting Paradise high up the slope of the mountain.  

The day for our trip arrived with some rain and what I hoped might be some snow at Mount Rainer.   I set out early in the morning with Dan, who had signed on for an all day Personal Workshop to learn more about his DSLR camera.  During the two and a half hour drive from Seattle to Mount Rainer we talked about the fundamentals of exposure:

• Aperture - The amount of light to hit the camera sensor.  Its like adjusting the blinds of a window.
• Shutter Speed - The length of time the shutter is open allowing light to hit the sensor.
• ISO - The sensitivity of the sensor.  Sensors have improved greatly over the past few years  and the problem of noise at high ISO setting has been greatly reduced, making ISO much more useful.
• Depth-Of-Field - Using the Aperture to control the sharpness in front of the behind the area of focus.

As we entered the park, we found ourselves in a lush forest of moss covered pine trees and a scattering of other trees showing off their fall colors.  

We slowly drove up a valley looking for interesting areas, we must have stopped at every turn-out because of something fun to explore, like the photographs above and below.  

With the temperature in the low thirties, we would jump out the car, grab the cameras, rain gear, run into the forest, photograph for a while, and then get back to the warmth of the car.

As we drove further up the mountain the light rain gave way to welcome snow, making it much easier to photograph as the snow can be brushed off the camera before it melts.

 

Higher up the mountain we encountered this large field of snow covered rocks that I thought made an interesting abstract image of positive and negative space.

 

One of the most popular places in Mount Rainier National Park is Christine Falls, named after the daughter of P. B. Van Trump who made the first documented ascent of Mount Rainier in 1870.  Years later, in 1888, he guided John Muir to the summit.

A little farther up the road, Dan spotted a lone maple tree in the midst of snow covered pines seen in the photo at the top of the post.  We spent quite a while taking in the surreal scene before we headed up the mountain toward Paradise. During the summer, the Paradise lodge and visitor center are teeming with people there to take in the beautiful alpine meadows and cool mountain air.   With the snow falling, the parking lot was near empty and the lodge was closed for the season, but it was still a gorgeous place to be.

PHOTO TIP:

Photographing in the rain and wet snow can be challenging because one usually needs a extra hand to hold an umbrella over the camera.   A solution is the AquaTech Sport Shield.  It fully covers the camera and lens and has small windows so you can see the lcd window and other key controls.   There is also an sleeve for your right hand to operate the camera while keeping everything dry, even in pouring rain.

Sometimes Mother Nature Gets The Best Of You

Sometimes Mother Nature Gets The Best of You

The weather reports today called for high surf along the coast so I decided to go out to Point Mugu State Park to photograph the crashing waves.  After climbing down from Pacific Coast Highway, I carefully set up my camera and tripod a good twenty feet from where the waves hit the rocks.  Over the next few minutes a number of great waves came in.

I paused for a moment waiting for the next set and with my eye against the viewfinder, I was all ready.  I could hear the next wave starting to hit the rocks behind me, getting louder and louder.   Then I sensed that it was getting a bit  too loud and I turned from the viewfinder to the surprise of a top of a rogue wave about to hit me.   Me, my camera, and camera backpack got a direct hit and were drenched.  Fortunately, the camera bag was closed, my Nikon D300 is built to take a bit of punishment, and my clothes would dry out.   I retreated to the warmth of my car to give Mother Nature a little room.

Rise Of The Sierras

Rise Of The Sierras

One of the great things about living in Southern California is the diversity of landscapes that are with just a few hours drive.  One can be enjoying the beach in the morning and be in an alpine meadow at ten thousand feet above sea level by lunch.  The rise of the Sierra Nevada Mountains from the Owens Valley along Highway 395 is an incredible example of this diversity.   The arid Alabama Hills just outside of Lone Pine are at an altitude of just over four thousand feet and then suddenly give way to ten thousand feet of mountains.   The photo at the top of this post shows this contrast.  I was in the Alabama Hills at an altitude a little above four thousand feet, and just eight miles away Lone Pine Peak juts up seven thousand feet to its height of thirteen thousand feet.  Mt Whitney, at over fourteen thousand feet, is hidden behind the cottonwood tree.

On this day trip, my wife and I had wanted to go up to Whitney Portal, but the road was closed for winter.  We decided to checkout the area around Lone Pine Campground and found this beautiful spot just before the creek goes under the road.

I moved around the area to get some different angles and perspectives of the creek.  The use of  tripod is crucial because of the desire to use fairly long shutter speeds, over one second.  I chose a longer shutter speed based on the experience gained photographing a waterfall at numerous shutter speeds a number of months ago. The previous post Water Fall Test shows the results.

When I got home and imported the days work into Aperture, I found I really liked the lower left area of the photo above.   The beauty of a digital workflow allows one to create copies of photo make artistic alterations.   In this case I cropped into an area the slow water movement around some rocks. 

Things To Do While Waiting For The Light

Things To Do While Waiting For The Light

Sometimes you may find yourself in a beautiful place waiting a while for that golden light before the sun sets.   I used one of those times to try out a my new Singh-Ray Vari-ND Variable Neutral Density Filter.   With this filter one can vary that amount of light hitting the sensor from two to eight stops, providing a lot of creative control of exposure.   This is important because the sensors in digital cameras are generally more sensitive to light than film, and therefore it can be difficult to get the long exposure times needed to give water falls that feeling of motion.

I set up my tripod and camera to photograph the same water fall over a wide range of exposure times to see the difference.  Here is my series of fourteen photographs using ISO 200.  Which one do you like the best?

f3.5   1/320 sec   No Filter

f4.5   1/200sec   No Filter

f6.3  1/100sec   No Filter

f/9   1/50sec   No Filter

f/13   1/25sec   No Filter

f/18   1/13sec   No filter

f/11   1/8sec   Vari ND

f/16   1/4sec   Vari ND

f/16   1/2sec   Vari ND

f16   1.0sec   Vari ND

f16   1.3secs   Vari ND

f16   2.0secs   Vari ND

f16   3.0secs   Vari ND

f16   4.0secs   Vari ND

Using the Vari ND filter allows for much longer exposures and a lot of creative choices that are important for photographing flowing water.  One issue I had was the undesirable vignetting(the dark areas in the corners of the photos caused by using too wide an angle of view and the filter edges become visible in the frame) when I added the Vari ND filter.  But for the purposes of my test I chose not to zoom in to avoid it because I wanted to keep the exact same field of view for all the photos.

 For this test I liked the one that was at 1/4 of a second.