Kilimajaro Shadow

I give high originality rates here for successfully taking a dramatic photograph of a shadow; I find the image fascinating. I see some pretty extreme pixilation on the larger version, which I hope is just a product of scanning and compression but does impair my ability to see detail - and detail is what we crave in this photograph. Very nice!

the peak on the left intelligently frames and balances the shadow. details are nice, but abstraction (and impact) is nicer.

A view to take your breath away - and it certainly does that. Would still prefer to view a LF print though - not much you can do there unfortunately...

ps What mm lens did you shoot this with? Just that the beautiful gold light on the horizon seems a little convex. And what is that golden band anyway? Is it pollution? Just interested as I have never viewed the world from such a height ;)

I must admit that I don't really know what causes the golden band. It could easily just be a haze effect, I suppose, but I'm going to have to investigate. I took the images with the wide end of a 28-75 lens (should'a switched to the 24, but lens changes weren't happening where I was halfway up the Great Western Breach wall). This is three images stitched horizontally. The curve to the horizon is just a result of the very wide angle of view and the 19,000-foot viewpoint. The poorly-hidden secret (need to improve my PS technique) is that some of the sky on one side has been replicated to the other side because in my hypoxic state I inadvertently switched an exposure setting in between two of the frames. Oops...

This is great work, Marshall. May I ask what you used to stitch it with?

 

I always wanted to climb this mountain, but I never got to Africa.

Thanks, Lannie. It was stitched with PT Tools/PTAssembler. For what it's worth, the stitching doesn't quite hold up to close scrutiny, because there were some major problems lining up the files (hypoxia-induced zoom and exposure problems on one of the files). Also, with large areas of low detail (like the sky) in the frame, it's hard to get enough control points all the way up for the software to do the job cleanly. Ultimately, I spent a lot of time in PS re-creating 1/3 of the sky to deal with the exposure problems and mis-alignment.

 

I seriously recommend the climb, for what it's worth. It's a great trip. Onward.