Little Mountain

My dad and I hiked up Sacagawea this after noon, and boy did we get better weather than when I hiked it a few weeks ago. The wind didn't really start blowing until we got up to the saddle, and even then it wasn't nearly as cold as before. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and you could see for miles and miles around. In places there was still snow from last week, and even a couple skiers trying to get early season runs in.

Up at the top, we sat and enjoyed the view for a bit, munching on the bars I made last night and some left over pizza. Yum Yum.

Then I got the camera out, and shot a little planet photo. Sacagawea is the highest peak in the Bridgers, so I figured it'd be a great spot for a little planet. Especially since we were on a ridge sort of deal, so it would look like the planet was divided in half.

I didn't do any HDR though this time. Crazy, I know. Not even black and white either...wohhh. Who is this guy?

I just wanted a simple, natural, photo....granted, one that has been warped and manipulated a ton to create a 360 stereographic image, but still.

To get the natural look, I just took photos. No fancy stuff, just ISO100, f/11 and 1/250. It's the sunny 16 rule. Only instead of shooting at f/16 (one stop darker than f/11), I shot at f/11 and then quickened my shutter by one stop to 1/250. The sunny 16 rule is to shoot at f/16 and then the closes shutter speed to your ISO speed. So if I was at ISO200, I'd shoot at 1/250. ISO50, 1/60 of a second. Pretty simple. It works for any bright and sunny day. You'll get the widest tonal range as possible. Every thing from dark darks, to bright whites.

As usual with little planet photos, I shot on a very, very level tripod, and overlapped a ton. In editing, I did a few little shadow adjustments at first to get some detail in them, then moved over to PTGui. However, I had too much overlap in shooting, so I only used every other photo. This just helped cut down on misaligned images. There were still some, but I don't have time to go in and manually re-do 100 points. It's good as it is.

I then went into Ps and filled in the hole in the center where there was no photo. I did this with a fairly hard stamp tool. If it's too soft, you begin to see blurriness in the rocks. It's happening a bit right now, but not too bad.

Didn't do anything else in Lr after that.

See you tomorrow!