North from Larch Mt.

I’m still working backwards through some of my photos to move them from the old website to the new. This is one from July of 2005.

A friend of mine uses the term “chicken run” to describe dropping what you are doing to dash out for a spur of the moment photo-op. (I have no idea where the term comes from.) On that day I was playing with sun and moon data on the Internet, and realized that a near full moon was going to rise very close to Mt. Hood when viewed from Larch Mountain. I called my friend, and we dashed out on a “chicken run” to try and capture the moon rise. It was a great almost. Although the moon and the lighting were perfect, the moon was just far enough west of Mt. Hood that both were too small when in the same frame.

While we were waiting though, we took some photographs looking north from Larch Mt. towards the Gorge and Mts. Adams and Rainier. This is a 1x3 stitch of the late light on the mountains.

I’ve wrestled with this photograph since then. Sometimes I like it a lot, other times not so much. My favorite parts of the photograph are the converging lines formed by the mountain ridges. I wish the sky had been more dramatic, but on the other hand a more dramatic sky might overwhelm the ridges below. I’ve tried adding shadow detail to the trees and ridges below the gorge, but seem to always end up preferring the darker version. My current mood is it’s a keeper, but I would love your opinion and any thoughts on improvements in processing.

As always, 720 is heck on panos, here's the larger view for those so inclined.

I really like the tones and color in the sky and the layering effect is nice. The darker, foreground ridge is on a nice diagonal through the frame. It's a beautiful shot. I think the upper left corner is a little bright, toning it down a little would help keep the focus more in the frame.

I was up there in june of 2005. I shot many frames of this comp and had some really dramatic clouds. To be honest, I like yours more and the way you handled the exposure of the foreground trees. I would call it a keeper.

I'ld call it a keeper also. There's just enough detail in the FG to hold interest and the haze helps accentuate the atmospheric perspective. Nice light on the mtns as well.

Keeper, but two minor things. Crop the right side to match the left spacing of mountains to the edge of the frame, and tone down the magenta on the mountains a tad. I like this...

John, I think this is a keeper too. I tried to view the larger version but I get an error page just so you know.

Thanks for the suggestions all!

Adrian, I made the changes suggested above to the photo, and then re-loaded it on my website, forgetting that would change the link to the larger version. Thanks for pointing it out ! It should be working now.