Mt. Rainier wildflowers on Mazama Ridge
Here’s the latest image in my Mt. Rainier series, a photo I took after about a week in the park. Although I got lucky a few mornings with interesting light, I had a long stretch in the middle of my trip when high pressure, blue sky weather moved in, severely curtailing my photographic opportunities. While most people think of sunny days as being great for nature photography, I argue the opposite. It is a persistent theme in my writings and my eBook Chasing the Light, that weather events give you the best photo ops. So, while most people enjoy the nice weather, I pray for rain, wind, storm clouds, lightning, and all the goodies that come with them (think fog, rainbows, and the most amazing light you can imagine, etc.)!
Nonetheless, sometimes one has to make the best of “bad” weather, so even thought the sun was shining bright one afternoon, I climbed up Mazama Ridge to look for subjects that would work well with the available light. As I climbed higher up the ridge, I became more and more interested in photographing wildflowers back-lit by the setting sun. I made several attempts, none of them yielding particularly appealing results. But I kept trying, working a patch of wildflowers until the sun sank behind the ridge, then climbing higher to find a patch still in the light, repeating as necessary. As I neared the top of the ridge, I realized that time had run out, and that I had one more try of making something work before the sun disappeared for the evening. As I walked along the trail, I suddenly spied a nice field of wildflowers, glowing warmly, back-lit by the sun setting through a grove of trees at the edge of the meadow. As I began to set up my tripod to take a shot, I noticed a small, lone pine tree in the meadow, and I was instantly attracted to its quirky shape. I positioned myself so that the sun was directly behind the tree, and then composed the image so that the sun was just outside the image frame, knowing through experience that I would be able to creatively use the flare that would result.
"Light is Life" - Wildflowers on Mazama Ridge beneath Mt. Rainier
Flare, caused by light directly striking the lens, can be pernicious and is often best avoided, but used creatively, it can add interest to one’s photos. For this image, a little bit of flare was great, as it created the “god-beam” effect coming from above the small tree, which was seen through the viewfinder when the lens was wide open. Unfortunately, it also created the dreaded “hexagons” when the actual pictures were taken, as the lens would then stop down to my working aperture of f/16, resulting in hexagon spots. I tried several variations, shielding the lens from light with my hand to varying degrees, in an effort to find a sweet spot that would allow me to keep the “good” flare and minimize the “bad” flare. I had no luck, however—it was either all flare or no flare at all. I finally opted to blend two exposures, one with flare, and one without, in order to achieve the effect that was oringally seen through the viewfinder. Although I am increasingly steering away from excessive Photoshop techniques that unduly alter the content of images, I do find many computer editing techniques useful in mitigating certain technical limitations of lenses and camera sensors. By simply manually blending the two exposures using layer masking techniques, I was able to keep the “god-beams” over the tree without having the rest of the image ruined by hexagonal flare spots.
This image is best viewed larger, and the width constraints of this blog do not do it justice. Click on the image or the following link to see a larger version.
Technical data: Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40mm lens (@37mm), ISO 100, f/16, 0.4 seconds, manual blend of two exposures to control flare.
