Life Gets Better With a Little Elevation

» Posted by David Taylor on Jul 10, 2010 in Adventure, Alaska, color, Dave Taylor, Denali National Park, Digital Darkroom & Printing, Friends, Hatcher Pass, Hiking/Backpacking, Landscapes, Mat-Su Valley, Mountains, Series: Digital Darkroom Techniques, Series: The Making Of, sky, Summer | 4 comments

Just back from a quick hike at a weird hour. Weird as in hiking from 9 pm to 1 am. Weird. Well, it is Alaska… Didn’t even need a headlamp at all last night, although it probably would have been a good idea. I spent my time in the wild with good friend and exceptional videographer, Scott Slone of Alaska HDTV.

What can I say? I’ve got talented friends.

We met shortly after 8 last night and drove the 1/2 hour to my “Back yard”. Yes, it’s a 1/2 hour away, but I can see it from my bedroom window. Hence, it’s my back yard. My logic is undeniable. Anyway… It seems as though I have just started seeing this area with new eyes. And the possibilities are endless.

Ever since I moved here, Hatcher Pass has been my backyard. My first evening here, my best friend Tim drove us the 4 minutes from my new home to the entry to Hatcher Pass. Here, the Little Susitna’s (Lil’ Su) turquoise waters rush over beautiful gray and white rocks. The river looks like a soft blue milk, with a hint of gray – one of my favorite colors on the planet.

These mountains are some of the oldest in Alaska. On the westernmost edge of the Talkeetna Range, they have eroded peaks and ridges, not sharp and defined like newer ones. But just a few miles to the east the range shifts dramatically; precarious spires and razor sharp ridge lines arc throughout the skyline. The valleys are home to hundreds of moose, and the alpine slopes to countless marmot and birds. There are fox and wolf in the area, although I have only seen the “sign” and not the actual critter.

In the summer months, this area is lush with plants and wild flowers. There are verdant green valleys that run for dozens of miles in all directions, small streams coursing their way and nourishing the wilderness. Old and abandoned mines dot the landscape, skeletons of a history not so long ago yet so very different present day Alaska.

There is one road, Willow Fishhook, that cuts through the western reaches of this range. It is a rough unpaved road, but the views can be extraordinary. Atop the pass (above Independence Mine), the road cuts next to Summit Lake. This was where we parked and began the slow trek high into the surrounding mountains. Our time was cut short, but our views were not. Despite the steadily approaching storm and driving rains, we could easily see the city lights of Palmer 13 miles away. To the north, we could see the lower ramparts of Denali at sunset. We climbed to about 4800 feet, then traced the ridge as it ran east-southeast, then slightly north, finally turning west and descending to my vehicle. It was only 4 hours, I could have spent a much longer time on the ridge, but it was very exposed and the weather hit us right after we summited. Scott and I are already planning our next trip up, a multi-day backpacking/filming trip. Should be spectacular.

For the photographers out there – here’s a brief breakdown of how I created the last image in today’s post.

In the Field

The wind was gusting pretty strong, but inconsistently. Because of the vast scene I knew that I needed to maximize my depth of field by using a wide angle lens and a small aperture (in this case, f/16). Of course, the problem is the wind. At f/16 I was getting a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds at ISO 100. Far too long of an exposure to stop the motion of the foreground flowers. The option was to boost my ISO up so my shutter speed would be high enough to stop their motion, but this meant an ISO of 1600. Higher ISOs like this mean noise. Noise is bad (…usually). I don’t own a tilt/shift lens, so I was kind of stuck.

Or… was I? (it helps if you say this while turning your head slightly sideways with a serious look on your face.)

My solution was to shoot the shot twice, once at a low ISO to capture the scene without noise and to focus on the middle and back ground. The second shot would be to focus on the flowers at a higher ISO to stop their motion. The exposures turned out like this: flowers = f/16 @ 1/4″, ISO 1600, with focus set on the flowers. Everything besides the flowers = f/16 @ 3.2″, ISO 100, with focus set on the rock outcropping in the upper left third of the frame.

Post Production

Once I had imported all of my shots into Lightroom, I did minor adjustments to the colors/saturation/contrast/etc. Then I exported both images into Photoshop as separate files. Now, here’s where it gets top-secret tip kinda zone… If you tell anyone how I did this, I’m telling your mother on you. With both files open in Photoshop, I selected FILE:AUTOMATE:PHOTOMERGE.

“But Dave, that is a program for making panoramics! You can’t use it that way, you’ll be arrested!”

Yes, I know. You are being way too dramatic. The problem with shooting two images of the same scene with slightly different focal points is the scenes don’t overlap perfectly. There is a slight misalignment. Don’t believe me? Try it out. Back? Ok… let’s continue. The great thing about Photomerge is not only its ability to merge side by side images into a stitched pano, but also to correct for misalignments in Blended Images. In essence, what you are doing is creating an image with much more depth of field. So, I selected the “Auto” feature and sat back. In a few seconds, it was done. Two images of the same scene, focused on different areas, overlaid and matched perfectly. I selected the layer that was the image taken at a higher ISO and positioned it as the bottom layer. The image with the low ISO (and no noise) was set as the top layer and I added a layer mask to it. At this point, the image looks nice. No noise, but flowers are blurred because of the focal point change and the motion caused by the wind. So I selected the layer mask I just created and “cut through” the top layer (blurred flowers) to the higher ISO layer below, but only where the flowers and immediately surrounding area was.

Presto Bango… an image with great depth of field (sharp from foreground to background), razor sharp flowers, and a clean sky with no noise visible anywhere. Yes, there is some noise in the flowers. But the sharpness of the detail overcomes that, plus the noise appears to be texture on the flowers. The noise is only visible at very large magnifications on my monitor – it will not be evident on even a very large size print.

One additional note, this is the supreme law of digital photography. If you can only take one photo and have no chance of blending an image (an example would be a wildlife shot), ALWAYS boost the ISO to stop the action. I would rather have a sharp noisy image than a completely clean blurry image.

I hope this technique inspires you to try some new comps, next time you’re in the field.

Stay tuned.

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