A few parts of the drive were a bit dicey - not because of ice or anything, mind you, but because of thick fog, especially on I-5 near Everett and on SR 20 through the Skagit Valley. Add to that the "Elk Crossing" signs (which I believe now, since one almost killed me this summer), and you've got all the ingredients for a stressful commute.
Thankfully, I had left my self enough time to make sunrise, even driving slowly through the fog. The Baker Lake Road itself was frosty but generally not foggy, so not much of a problem at all.
I took a variety of compositions just as the sun was beginning to hit the mountaintop; the one below was my best.
I then had the idea of a composition that would include Boulder Creek and its rocky flood plain. As you can see, lighting was a problem, even at this early hour, with a large contrast between the sunlit part of the mountain and the still-shadowed foreground. Using a graduated neutral density filter would have been impractical, I decided, since it would have darkened the tops of the trees to the left of Mount Baker, which would have looked a bit awkward. Those filters are best when when the boundary between the light and dark areas of the image is more linear. (I did use a polarizing filter to help with the sky).
Still, I got it to the point where, with editing, I think there'd be a tolerable amount of detail in each area. The foreground doesn't need to be super bright; it's sunrise, after all. The water blurred at an exposure time of 1/2 second; the aperture I chose was f/18 to keep everything in focus.
Stay tuned for a post with photos from my second destination yesterday (the Baker River and East Bank Baker Lake trails).
No comments:
Post a Comment