One of the perks of being stuck at home is to go back and comb the archives for hidden gems. The improvement in editing techniques can lease new life to old images that I had discarded as 'uneditable'. Lightroom's capabilities to selectively filter regions based on luminance and color ranges have proved invaluable in this.
This was one such image, which proved difficult to edit at the time I shot it (6 years ago) due to the high dynamic range. While I did take a few bracketed exposures of this scene, and shot a few others with a graduated ND filter, the former lacked sharpness due to lack of a tripod to keep the camera steady, and the latter introduced visual artifacts that were proving challenging to remove. With the new capabilities of LR, I was able to control exposure in a much better manner, and restore the photo to what I actually experienced at the scene.
Gifford Pinchot National Forest
WA USA
Sentinels in Blue
As the last rays of the sun disappeared behind the distant peaks in the western horizon, the winds died down and the temperature dropped. An eerie sense of calmness descended on the grassy ridge I was on. The multitudes of mountain ranges slowly started compressing into one as the valleys below descended into darkness. Soon the sky will too, save for starlight.
The hikers had long gone, leaving behind only the beautiful blue hour as company for the cold evening. But staying back to enjoy this scene, despite the prospect of hiking back to the campsite in dark, was definitely worth it.
Gifford Pinchot National Forest
WA USA
A Sunset to Remember
"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”
-- John Muir
Another day in the backcountry wilderness of Washington was about to end. I sat on a narrow trail etched into the steep rocky terrain, watching the light slowly fade. As the light beams slowly swirled over the forests below, I felt as far away from the trappings of human civilization as I could ever be.
The sun appeared, albeit for a brief moment, from behind the mass of low-hanging clouds: a blast of bright orange without a mushroom cloud. Plants lit up, trees glowed, and cameras flickered. And then it disappeared. But, in that brief moment of light, it felt as though the mountains were calling to the tired souls inside all of us.
It is time to answer that call, and to go out.
Gifford Pinchot National Forest
WA USA