Bald Day

Hiked Baldy today. Perfect hiking day, warm, but not too warm. Nice breeze, but not too cold. Snow, but just enough to make the photos awesome. And quiet, almost nobody was hiking once I got above the M. I greatly recommend Baldy for hiking, it's a long, hard hike up, but the view is simply amazing, and all along the ridge there are great views as well. There's a couple thousand feet of evaluation gain (pretty much all in the first couple miles) but along the ridge there's some gorgeous gentle climbs up meadows and along ridges. The final hike up to the top is super steep, but there are fossils around everywhere! And when you get to the top, it's a complete 360 view. Simply amazing.

I luged three cameras up there today. My 7D, my Nikon EM (35mm film), and then a Toyo 4x5 camera for class. I don't have any of the pictures from the EM or the Toyo because I haven't developed them yet, but I can't wait to see the results. It was so much fun having three cameras to play with up top. Manipulating the focal plane on the Toyo is definitely my favorite thing about shooting 4x5. I got the ground in front of me in focus, as well as Bozeman which is a few miles away! I just love what you can do with those cameras! So worth luging it up there.

But now for the blog photo, shot with the 7D. I did one panoramic with a 10mm lens, but I felt the wide angle expanded the distance too much. To be able to really see anything of the valleys, I needed to get a little more zoom in, or blow up a print to the size of a wall. Since I didn't have a wall or print, I just put my 18-135 on a went to 30mm. This still got some of the foreground, but it compressed and brought the distance a little closer. It's much more the focus now than in the last panoramic. I'll post both so you can tell the difference.

Since I was doing a 360 degree pano, I need to be certain my trip was absolutely level. It it wasn't, I'd lose a lot of image in cropping. The resulting image would be pretty much like a wave, so to crop it and have no blank space you'd only get this tiny strip in the middle. No bueno.

I shot at ISO100, f13 (with a polarizer), 1/80 and 30mm. With about 50% overlap between frames so that it would play nice in compositing.

Before I did the pano in Ps, I did some basic edits on the photos. I upped the clarity, highlights, contrast and shadows a bit. I also converted them to b/w to get rid of the mute colors of the day. I just wasn't a fan of them. In the evening it would have been nice, but maybe next weekend when I don't have to get up early the next day.

Ps did and excellent job making the pano, and after cropping I went back into Lr. I did just some local  adjustments to the two valleys to up the clarity. That's it. I just wanted more pop in those areas, and that's what clarity does.

Shot 30mm

Shot 10mm

See you tomorrow!