1 Sep
2010

Posted in: Mt. Rainier
By Ian Plant    14 Comments

Mt. Rainier Wildflowers

I’m finally back from two weeks of shooting Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington, with a brief side-trip down to Oregon to photograph the Columbia River Gorge. My previous post from Mt. Rainier, as you may recall, squarely fell into the “nothing special” category, as I didn’t dare process any of my good images on my uncalibrated netbook computer. Now that I’m back home, I have begun to process my images on my calibrated home computer, so I’m ready to start posting the good stuff! I’ll be putting up a series of images over the next few weeks, describing in detail how each image was made.

I’d like to start with an image that I call “The Dreamer Awakens” (I’m not sure why I picked this title, it just seems to apply somehow). I arose from my campsite in the predawn hours to begin my ascent up Mazama Ridge in the Paradise area of the park. Some clouds had drifted in overnight, and a beautiful lenticular cloud had settled over Rainier like an old fashioned nightcap (you know, the kind of nightcap that would be worn on the head, rather than quaffed in the form of a pleasant mixed drink). I spent a considerable amount of time looking for an arrangement of lupine flowers to complement the scene. It is against the park rules to leave the trails in the Paradise area, as the hordes of tourists that descend on the flower fields every summer do considerable damage to the fragile alpine meadows. Although I am not known as one who has much, if any, respect for authority, I nonetheless found myself walking up and down the trail that morning, searching for a composition that could be photographed without violating the sanctity of the meadows. The best sunrise light of my whole trip, and suddenly I grow a conscience!

The lenticular began to light up with the rosy color of dawn, and I still hadn’t found my ideal foreground. I had no choice but to stop and compose something quickly. As luck would have it, suddenly a pleasing arrangement of flowers appeared to me, right at my feet. I hastily set up my shot, ensuring proper focus and depth-of-field, and then began to fire off a series of images as the light progressed in the sky. Lupine fields are often quite chaotic, and most compositions end up being rather simple: a bunch of undifferentiated flowers in the foreground, extending towards the mountain in the background. I was pleased to come up with an image that incorporated an interesting abstract shape formed by the arrangement and spacing of flowers, adding compositional structure and acting as a leading element drawing the eye toward the majestic peak in the background.

I photographed this image using my Canon 5D Mark II camera, 17-40mm lens (@17mm), ISO 200 (to minimize shutter speed as there was a slight breeze), f/18 (to ensure sharp focus from near to far in the image), at 1.3 seconds. I used a Singh-Ray 2-stop reverse graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure of the sky and the foreground. A reverse grad applies most of its filtration to a central area that can be placed near the horizon, preventing the top of the sky from going artificially dark as often happens using traditional grads.

I strove to keep my processing of this image as natural as possible, making only minor adjustments necessary to bring out the color and contrast that is lacking in a raw format capture. It seems to me that more and more people are excessively pumping the color of their images using Photoshop these days—it’s kinda like steroid use in professional baseball, with everyone doing it but no one fessing up. Although I feel the competitive pressure to do so myself and have dabbled with “juicing” my images in the past, it is something that I am increasingly trying to veer away from. I much prefer to let composition, the beauty of nature, and those rare magical moments guide my work. At the end of the day, a great image earned is sweeter than one conjured up in Photoshop.

"The Dreamer Awakens" - Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

More From Ian Plant Dreamscapes

• Mt. Rainier wildflowers on Mazama Ridge
• Mt. Rainier wildflowers and fog, Mazama Ridge
• Wildflower abstract, Mt. Rainier

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About Ian Plant  (259 Posts)

Ian Plant's photographs and instructional articles have appeared in a number of books, calendars, and magazines, including Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography. Ian writes a regular blog column for Outdoor Photographer online, and he is the author of numerous instructional eBooks and digital processing tutorials. Ian leads several photo tours each year.