The past few months have been a hiatus from photography for me. (Fortunately all for the good, no calamities.) I was finally able to make it back out into the field this past weekend, and enjoyed a couple of days in the High Lakes region north and northwest of Mt. Adams.
The lupine, and supporting cast, is peaking at the lower elevations that border the wilderness area now. I hiked up the Killen Creek Trail to its junction with the Pacific Crest Trail to see how things were, and found that while all major flowers were represented it looks like a couple of weeks short of really going well. (Maybe sooner with this heat?) At the higher elevations, the flowers were mostly grouped around trees at the edges of the meadows where the snow would have melted earlier, but the meadows proper have yet to fill in.
This photo was taken along Killen creek. I had used up the softer light trying to shoot Mt. Adams (I’ll post that photo in ESS), so the lighting is a bit harsh here, but it gives a good idea of the current flower situation.
Nikon D80
Nikon 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 at 12 mm
1/20 sec at f/16.0 and ISO 100
Thanks John, I was going to head up to Bird Meadows soon.
David M. Cobb
Posted by Chris Hodney on August 5, 2009 at 12:49 PM
You did an excellent job of controlling that harsh light. The image overall is a little dark I think, but it still works for my tastes. Fantastic composition and detail, and I love the paintbrush peeking out in the FG.
I have some similar shots I took up near Jefferson Park this weekend.....any tips on controlling the contrast so well?
Posted by John Williams on August 7, 2009 at 10:30 PM
Thanks Chris. I wish I had some real winner ideas, but I struggle with harshly lit flowers too. For this photo, I increased contrast by darkening the quartertones in a curve adjustment. I'll often raise the higher tones for a typical s-curve, but in this case I left them alone.
The other thing I've been playing with, that I think helped here, is to increase saturation through a luminosity mask. I make saturation adjustments using a saturation layer until I'm happy with how the darker colors are, and then I'll add a second saturation layer with the l channel from lab as a mask. This allows me to push the color in the brightest areas, and keeps them from looking so blah.
Discussion
5 repliesThe lupine, and supporting cast, is peaking at the lower elevations that border the wilderness area now. I hiked up the Killen Creek Trail to its junction with the Pacific Crest Trail to see how things were, and found that while all major flowers were represented it looks like a couple of weeks short of really going well. (Maybe sooner with this heat?) At the higher elevations, the flowers were mostly grouped around trees at the edges of the meadows where the snow would have melted earlier, but the meadows proper have yet to fill in.
This photo was taken along Killen creek. I had used up the softer light trying to shoot Mt. Adams (I’ll post that photo in ESS), so the lighting is a bit harsh here, but it gives a good idea of the current flower situation.
Nikon D80
Nikon 12.0-24.0 mm f/4.0 at 12 mm
1/20 sec at f/16.0 and ISO 100
David M. Cobb
I have some similar shots I took up near Jefferson Park this weekend.....any tips on controlling the contrast so well?
The other thing I've been playing with, that I think helped here, is to increase saturation through a luminosity mask. I make saturation adjustments using a saturation layer until I'm happy with how the darker colors are, and then I'll add a second saturation layer with the l channel from lab as a mask. This allows me to push the color in the brightest areas, and keeps them from looking so blah.