Alaska Photography and Photo Tours: Specializing in Wild Lands & Wild Life
I’m starting a new type of Journal entry: “The Making Of”. This series will explain my preparations, photographic method and finally post production for a specific image. I hope this will prove insightful, and get you thinking about how you “get ‘er done”. Please, comment below! If you have questions about any post – ask. I love this stuff and don’t mind one bit. So, without further ado… I need a drum set (SOMEBODY!!! Drum roll please!).
Alpenglow on the Alaska Range, February 21, 2009 - click to enlarge
“Winter – a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey and enjoy every idle hour…”
unknown, from Victoria’s Book of Days
I’ve been meaning to get back up and shoot the Alaska Range (Denali specifically), from Talkeetna, for some time. Since I currently have a real job Tuesday through Friday, my photography during the Alaskan winters are restricted mainly to my long weekends. Speaking of which, I’m seriously considering speaking to my congressman about initiating a new bill. What would you all think of a 7 day weekend? Think of how much more we’d get done! Anyway…
Weather is a constantly evolving thing, especially in Alaska. I checked the forecast for Denali National Park on Friday morning, clouds appeared to be moving in. Then I checked it again Friday night, and the forecast had changed again – this time to clear skies. Time to set the alarm. It’s still humorous to me; when I get up early (like 2-3 am early) to be somewhere for sunrise, I have absolutely no problem and look forward to it. But when I have to get up much earlier for my real job (like 7 am early), it is sooo much harder to roll out of bed. But I digress. Sunrise was at 8:28 am in Talkeetna, according to the USNO. I like to be on-site at least 1 hour early, usually 2. With that in mind, I factored in the 1 hour drive time & I set my alarm for 5:00 am.
I always prep my gear and clothing the day/evening before a shoot. Batteries charged? Check. Camera & lenses clean & functioning? Check. Gear checked, sorted & packed? Check, check, and check. Food, clothing, and emergency equipment? Check. Clean underwear? Yes, mom… CHECK!
After leaving in the morning, I stopped by the local Tesoro gas station, filled up the tank & grabbed a few Nutrigrain bars (’cause they’re like Fig Newton bars… on steroids), a bottle of o.j. and a Gatorade. When doing landscape photography, I actually hope for a few cloud – they add a lot to the sky, especially with a nice sunrise. They can put a shot of a mountain range over the top if there is alpenglow added. I got lucky Saturday morning. Impressive mountains? Uh, yeah… it’s Denali and the Alaska Range. Check! Sunrise? Well it was bound to happen again this morning, so check! Alpenglow? Glorious, and check!
I parked at my pre-scouted location, got my gear and hiked till I found a pleasing view. I put my camera bag down in the snow, lid up and chose a spot for my tripod. Quick tip: I am always careful about setting up my tripod – especially in snow. If you open your tripod stance to its widest position and push it straight down into deep snow, you can easily damage or break your tripod. The snow will force the legs further apart than they are meant to go, either they will flex and weaken/break or the tripod collar (where the legs meet below the head) will weaken/break. Don’t do it! Tripods are nice inventions, don’t hurt them… what did they ever do to you? Imagine someone forcing you to do the splits in the snow, naked! Ok, scratch that – don’t imagine it… it’s disturbing. Two options, stomp the snow down in the area you want to set up in, or keep the tripod legs in (don’t do the splits!) and allow them to spread more naturally as you push them into the snow. Just be cautious. I recommend stomping the snow down a bit, it’ll help you stay warm and lesson your chances of damaging the tripod legs.
Once set up, I made a few test exposures since alpenglow was still 1/2 hour away or more. Worked on the compositions I knew I wanted to get (and looked for ones I hadn’t thought of). My goal was to take several overlapping shots in a panoramic series, so I leveled my tripod carefully (I have a bubble level on the tripod collar) and verified that my camera would remain level throughout the series of overlapping images with another bubble level on top of my camera’s hot shoe. Precise leveling is one of the most important points in proper panoramic composition, along with consistent exposure, and overlapping of images. I plugged in my remote shutter release, and set my ISO to 100 for longer exposures and no noise (mmm… BIGGER PRINTS!).
Another quick tip: the cable itself can become very stiff & brittle while shooting in the cold, be careful to not manhandle it – it may snap.
I turned my autofocus off. It’s a mountain, it’s not going anywhere… not in my lifetime anyway. Plus, I have the greatest photographic inventions ever created, eyes with properly prescribed glasses! I also turned off my lenses image stabilizer. This particular lens takes sharper shots when the I.S. is turned off if mounted to a steady tripod. I also tried something new, Live View. It turns on the hi-rez lcd on the rear of the camera, full time. I am able to see exactly what the sensor is seeing, including how my exposure settings are affecting the image, and focus by zooming in up to 10X for critical focus. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this function. I’ve owned cameras before that had this ability, but I never tried it out. It really works very well for landscapes. It does drain the batteries faster, especially in the cold – but I still got about 400 RAW files out of a single battery that morning. More than worth it. Note to self:
“Self, buy more batteries.”
“Sure thing Self, I’d be happy to.”
Done.
Ok, so the nitty gritty part. Decided to compose the panoramic series by turning the camera to vertical (by using the lens collar ring) – I would have to take more photographs than if I shot each horizontally, but I’d get more resolution and more detail this way. I focused (using Live View) manually on one of Denali’s upper ridge lines. I set my exposure to f16 at 1/6″, verified my Live View exposure. Another nice thing about Live View is that it automatically sets the mirror lock up, this reduces vibration and should give an even sharper image with longer exposures. I reverified my leveling throughout the shot sequence, and locked all of my ball head knobs – except for the pan tension. Check.
I always feel like I’m listening to Mission Control from the top of a rocket right before I get to my play time. Play time is the actual photography portion, the set up is business. A subtle change of color in the lenticular cloud directly over Denali’s summit signals the countdown.
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
Alpenglow! And we have blastoff.
I’ve already prepared as much as I can, now it’s all down to proper technique. Take the first shot in the series (I always move left to right), pan right (remember to overlap about 1/4-1/3 of the frame), let the camera settle and be still. Shoot & repeat. This image is a 10 image combination. All equal exposures, taking exactly 50 seconds to shoot the entire sequence, but the total exposure time was only 1.67 seconds. From left to right, the distance captured here is nearly 30 miles across. Denali rises 20,320 feet above me from almost exactly 60 miles away. I took series after series, 140 images in total. Made some mistakes. Hey, I’m not perfect! But I also made some images that sing to me, hopefully someone else will here the chorus.
I also scouted another location that morning, but shot only birds. Only birds? Well that was said the wrong way. Beautiful birds in an amazing location! New friends have an amazing view of the Alaska Range, all the way from Sleeping Lady in the west, to well past Denali in the east. I can’t wait to visit them again, very nice people with an amazing view. And DOGS!!! Good people.
So, on to the post processing. This is actually fairly basic stuff – as I don’t “reinvent” nature’s beauty by overdoing it in post. I synchronize all the images once in Lightroom, make sure the exposures truly are even. Do my color corrections, minor tweaks to contrast, saturation/vibrance, a small amount of capture sharpening (every RAW digital image needs some initial sharpening, since only jpegs are sharpened in the camera). Then I selected all the images and sent them to Photoshop CS3 for the panoramic stitching/blending. Once in Photoshop, it’s a simple matter of running “Photomerge” on the opened files. Since I took such care in my leveling the tripod and camera, everything went very smoothly. Once the files were combined (it takes a while – the resulting file is nearly 2 gigs), I verify the alignment and flatten the layers. Then I do my final “fine tuning” of the image, subtle things like dodge and burning areas of the photo to add depth and contrast. Then I save the file as a master file. When I have a final use for the image, it will be duplicated, resized and given a final sharpening for that final size. The original master stays untouched and can be used for multiple purposes. Another note: the sharpening that I do is almost always “selective” sharpening. I rarely sharpen the blurred background or sky in an image. Sharpening these areas just draws undue attention to them and increases apparent grain. I’ll have some “how to’s” in the future about these Photoshop techniques.
So… that’s it! More or less. Like I said in the intro – if you have a question, leave it in the comments section so others can benefit from the answers – I’m glad to help whenever I can. If I can’t, I’ll try to point you in the right direction.
What did I learn? Next time, use the snowshoes I had in my trunk. It would have made the short hike even easier. As a friend pointed out, I should have had worn my snow pants (and not my jeans). Did I get cold? No, but I could have – especially with how deep the snow was (hip deep… yeah, snow shoes would have been great). Practice what I preach to new photographers, “Know your camera!” In the heat of the moment (ok, so it was -4 F) I rotated the back control dial to adjust my exposure while in manual mode, and adjusted the shutter speed for the exposure I wanted. But after I had taken a few photographs, I realized that I had changed my aperture to f32, rather than keeping it around f14-f16. Lenses typically get soft (focus wise) when used at extremely small apertures, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to my settings. Did I miss any shots because of this? No, I still had a “correct” exposure, but the shots were ever so slightly less sharp than the photos I made after I adjusted the f-stop back to where it should have been. Know your equipment. Pop quiz: if in manual mode, do you know which dial on your camera controls the aperture and which controls the shutter speed? Alright hotshot, pop quiz #2: which direction would you turn the respective dials to make a longer exposure, or a smaller aperture? If you don’t know, sit down with your camera right now… and practice. What’s the big deal? Lost shots.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
Mark Twain
He should have added, “Know your camera, so you aren’t disappointed by the shots that you didn’t get.”
What’s next? Well, I’ve got a bunch of bird photos to post, so they’re coming up. Also have that review of the Bushhawk camera support system wrapping up, complete with profanity!!! But not what you think. More like, “why the #$@! didn’t I get one of these things sooner?”
Looking at the weather report right now… might be good skies above Denali again tomorrow morning. Time to set my alarm early again and check my gear:) Clean underwear? Check.
Stay tuned!
Yeah, that's my handsome mug. Notice the "designer" snow pants? See? They are pants with snow on them. Hence, snow pants!
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Hey Dave – great color! Did you remember extra batteries on the second trip up?
The parental units
Very nice. I note you omitted camera and lens details. Intentional? If I recall correctly, you are a fellow Oly user?
What brand of tripod do you use? I’m dithering over what to get to replace my Manfrotto 190…
Hey Jim-
Thanks much, and thanks for stopping by. I did leave out the camera and lens details, didn’t I? Oops. This was taken with my 50D (sorry, I’m a Canon guy – but hey, they’re only light tight boxes, “tools” at best) and 100-400L IS lens set at 210 mm. with the AF and IS off.
I’ve been using the same Gitzo carbon fiber for about 5 years now – it’s been amazing. I think it’s one of the Mountaineer Series, a 3 section tripod. The twist locks aren’t quite as convenient as the flip switches on my old Manfrotto “Jolly Green Giant”, but they are certainly more sturdy. I also use a Kirk BH-1 Arca-Swiss style ball head, and this too has been rock steady and reliable. We spend thousands of dollars on cameras, lenses, and accessories… but often the weakest link is in the device that holds the whole thing up. I figured that I’d rather spend a bit more initially and save myself the cost of continuously needing to upgrade.