Mount Ngauruhoe

Gallery: LandscapePosted October 22, 2014109 views4 comments

Mount Ngauruhoe is in Tongariro National Park on the north island of New Zealand. I was there in October 2009. You may also be familiar with this as Mount Doom from the recent Lord of the Rings movies.

I somehow managed to get 35 days away to travel in New Zealand. I was lucky to get that chance, but we didn't have a lot of time to poke around and wait for weather to clear at any places. One of my anticipated highlights was to hike the Tongariro Crossing.

When we arrived at our hotel that would also provide transportation you could hardly see a thing. Clouds and a spring snow. The following day was much the same so we were unable to go on the hike.

The following day was a travel day, but it was so beautiful out that we did get out and hike for a awhile in the park. This image comes from that hike. The crossing still calls to me...I hope someday to get back to this place.

I felt like this image worked better in b&w because of the highlights in the clouds. And I've been drawn to trying out images in b&w lately.

Nikon D80 w 18-200, 75 mm | f10 | 1/320

Thanks for your comments and suggestions!
Jeff Martyka

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by Bill Reid on October 22, 2014 at 10:33 AM

It looks like an impressive place to visit Jeff. I might darken the fore ground a bit to let the eye go to the mountain first. Nice job.

Registered on January 27, 2013, 65 Posts, 2460 Comments

Comment posted by D.A. Edwards on October 22, 2014 at 3:21 PM

Very nice composition that works well as a B+W. I could see a bit of a crop off the top and messing around with the highlights in the clouds... some of the cloud whites, especially on the right, look unnaturally grayed out.
I did the Crossing many years ago when one of those sudden NZ mountain weather changes occurred which had me very, very worried about making it to the next hut in a driving, cold rain. I quickly understood why they have posts along the trail every 10 meters or so which I had thought up to that point was overkill.

Registered on October 8, 2014, 226 Posts, 1187 Comments

Comment posted by Ed Lowe on October 22, 2014 at 10:33 PM

Really nice B&W, Jeff. I like the layers and tones in this scene. My only suggestion would be a little crop from the top to place more of an emphasis on the mountain.

Ed

Registered on February 7, 2004, 414 Posts, 7115 Comments

Comment posted by Jeff Martyka on October 25, 2014 at 12:29 AM

Thanks for the thoughts!

I've incorporated comments on the foreground and cropping. The crop in particular feels much better! I like to export images to my TV, sit on the couch and stare at them...I could almost feel the clouds move with the crop.

I made some cloud adjustments but there just isn't much to do there. A good portion of the clouds are completely blown out with no data. 5 years later me would have taken 2 exposures and had a tripod with.

I'd considered not editing or posting this because of the clouds, but ultimately decided I'm ok with the highlights because it does remind me of how bright it was out there at 11 am. Without sunglasses on it was an extremely squinty kind of day between the clouds and snow on this and other peaks.

Thanks again for the comments...really made me happier with this with the edits.

Registered on June 20, 2014, 30 Posts, 155 Comments