Clear Day at Cascade Pass

The weather was amazing yesterday, and I had a day free to take what might be my last hike in the mountains this season before the weather really turns. My destination was Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park, a long drive from the Seattle area but well worth the effort. (For any readers who know the area, I didn't make it up Sahale Arm. I'm saving that journey for another time, preferably in the summer, when I can camp near the trailhead and start hiking at 5am rather than 9am. I'd love to do photography at Sahale Arm but don't work/move quickly enough to make it happen on a day trip).

The scenery was grand, as always, with mountains close at hand, bright fall colors, and blue skies. But this combination presented its own set of challenges. The juxtaposition of colorful ground plants and mountains lent itself well to wide focal lengths; I exclusively used my wide-angle zoom lens yesterday. At wide angles, though, particularly at high elevations, the sky can polarize unevenly in the frame when using a polarizing filter. A certain amount of this will look natural, but it easily gets out of hand in these conditions, and I had to correct for it in almost all of the images in this post. Another challenge was the high contrast created by the midday sunshine (although this is more manageable right now than in the summer due to the lower angle of the sun).

The first image, from just west of the pass, is my favorite, due to the stark contrast between the sunlit plants and trees and the shaded mountainsides. F/20.

The second image, also from just west of the pass, suffers a bit from the uneven polarization that I mentioned earlier. I improved it a lot in Lightroom, although it's never final until I've seen it in print. Beyond that, though, I'm pleased with this composition. F/18.

The next image is from just east of Cascade Pass, from the trail that leads down into the Pelton Basin.  I liked the contrasting colors of the grass and leaves in the foreground, and wanted to set that against the classic Cascade Pass view beyond. If you look closely at the sides of the image, there's some discernible perspective distortion. Having the vertically oriented trees at the center helps (as does the grass) - they provide what the late photographer Galen Rowell called "visual sea level," a reference point in the presence of distortion or extreme angles. F/20.

The final image is from the same vantage point as the previous, just a few steps away. Again, the vertical orientation of the center trees helps make the perspective distortion manageable. I am on the fence about whether the sky takes up too much of this image. F/20.