Adventures in Harsh Lighting

On Saturday, I hiked to Green Lake in Mount Rainier National Park. The hike starts on a closed road paralleling the Carbon River, then climbs moderately to the lake. Compared to a lot of the hikes I do, the mileage is relatively high (almost ten miles round trip), but the three miles (each way) on the closed road really breeze by. The sunlight and intermittent breezes made photography challenging, as you'll see below, but it was still a pleasure to hike in springlike conditions and eat lunch in warm sunshine.

First, a view of Green Lake itself. Frankly, I'm surprised that this one worked at all. The glare from the sunlit lake created a very high-contrast lighting environment. More practically, I couldn't see my results on the display screen. A few factors were working in my favor, however: I'm getting better at using the histogram to evaluate the lighting, and the air at the lake was completely calm, so I didn't have to watch the leaves for a lull in the breeze. F/14.

The road/trail mostly stays away from the Carbon River, but just before the Green Lake trailhead, there's a nice view of it and the surrounding hills. I wouldn't have been able to include more of the hills without overexposing some sky, but here's a shot of the river. F/16.

Most of the trail passes through lush, mossy forest. Sunlight makes any photography in such a setting difficult, but I actually had some success in the late afternoon light. Here are two shots from the same vantage point; I think I like the first more, but I keep going back and forth. Both F/16.

In addition to the lake, another "destination" on the trail is Ranger Falls. I had trouble getting a good shot of the falls due to winds blowing the branches around, and eventually gave up on getting them all still at the same time. As such, I'm not crazy about this shot, but I'm glad I tried. F/14, 1.6 seconds.

Finally, one with an old cedar trunk in the foreground. This was another instance were winds were making it hard getting all of the tree branches sharp. To achieve a faster shutter speed, I didn't use as narrow of an aperture as I otherwise would have, thus sacrificing some image quality in the background. F/16.