Chief Mountain, Dawn

Chief Mountain with first light on high clouds, Autumn, Glacier

National Park. View a very large copy of this image here:

http://wildphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/2190869

 

Thanks for comments/suggestions.

Another nice one Marc. Crisp, subtle light, contrasting colors... Keep 'em coming.

Beautiful shot, very nice colors and light, great details, composition and presentation.

 

Regards

Excellent colors and light Marc. Probably the prettiest photo of Chief Mtn I've seen. Congratulations.

Big fan of your stuff Marc. The enlargement looks incredible on your website. I'd pay for a detailed description of your workflow. Is a Canon 5d really that much better than a Nikon D200 or am I missing something? Adavanced sharpening? How do you get it looking so sharp with so little noise? I'm amazed.

Great, Marc. There are no words to praise the beauty of this landscape and how you captured it. I saw the enlarged version. It is also a stunning example of the performance of the Canon 5D. I would be interested to get some more information about the details of your shooting technique, camera settings and processing (Heavy tripod? picture style, sharpness, sharpening, contrast, white balance, mirror lock-up etc). Karl

Well done, wonderful idea, perfect tones and mood, that`s great, striking!

OK guys, here it is, but it's not short. If anyone else wants to see 12.8mp digital rival even medium format films for detail, buy one of my prints. The next best thing is on my website.

 

In the feild: Use a tripod for almost everything. I recommend the rigidity and relative light weight of Carbon Fiber, afterall, you can always attach a weight to the tripod should you need to. Use mirror lock-up, especially with Shutter Speeds of 1/60-4 seconds. Use a remote release. This reduces any chance of human error impacting sharpness. Buy excellent glass - this goes for lenses and filters. I have a 17-40L (mine performs better than some negative reports would indicate, again, just look at the sample image on my site) a 24-105L and a 70-200L. These are not $5000 lenses. They are probably within reach for most serious photographers. Use quality filters and minimize stacking them too much. Both sample images on my site used Singh-Ray grad filters. I also have a Hoya polarizer and ND.

 

Processing: Don't sharpen an image at all until you're ready to print it. Don't sharpen sky and open water areas due to increases in noise. Not one sharpening method works best for every print. The size of the print must be taken into account. While heavy sharpening might be appropriate for a small print on traditional photo papers, the same image would be way oversharpened if printed big on ink papers which hold details better. The 2500 pixel version of this image on my site will appear oversharpened at its native resolution of 4328 pixels. If I displayed a 4328 pixel version, I would have applied a finer sharpening technique. I did not apply any sharpening to the sky, but did not apply noise reduction either - that's just the 5D doing its thing at 100 ISO.

 

Sharpening Methods: There's lots of them. I've tried most of them including Adobe RAW, PS CS2 USM and sharpen layers, TLR Pro software and PK Sharpener software. What works best for me in many cases is unconventional, but you've seen the results. I interpolated the image to 7500 pixels and applied a "Sharpen" filter layer in CS2 3 times and then reduced the image to the 2500 pixel output, much like I have done for years in my now well known web-sharpening technique. You have to perform this technique differently for every print size and every image. This produces an extremely fine USM with less noise prevelent than software like Adobe RAW or TLR. Again, ONLY SHARPEN THE AREAS THAT NEED TO BE SHARP. Not skies, water, or dark and featureless portions of an image. I also enjoy TLR pro software, although it seems to be a bit harder to control the grain-like noise it adds. I do not recommend sharpening images in Adobe RAW due to lack of control.

Marc,

looking at it again and again...I think it would be a helluva lot more interesting by chopping most of the sky out, allowing the eye to settle more in the treeline...thusly balancing out the comp more...IMO. Your trip was sure a resounding success!

 

My hat's off to you for sharing so much of your process. I can't say I'd be as totally forthcoming. People can pay for it or go through the learning processes we did/do.

I've never seen Chief Mountain look so cool. The color in the trees and sky is beautiful. I think taking a little off the top does help, but the difference is negligable. Per Rick's comment I commend you on sharing your workflow, but I agree there are numerous photographers out there less talented than you that make money off sharing such information. Personally I try to be as forthcoming as I can in the right forum but its a matter of personal comfort/taste.

Oh and the bonus on this image is that it doesn't appear you had to stand in ice water to get it :)

Awesome....beautiful....love the color...

Thks for sharing your knowledge...I'm big fan of you and the Timecatcher Photographer..

Your journey did bring a wonderful images...