Backpacking in the Whiteclouds

For the past few years, I've had the opportunity to take a few backpacking trips with family and friends.  In the summer of 2009, a small group of us took on the Big Boulder Chain Lakes trail in the Whiteclouds range in Idaho. 

Right Brain:  Backpacking for me has to be one of the best experiences to stimulate creativity.  It makes me get away from my computer and all other things related to technology, for one.  Some who went with us thought I was nuts packing in my SLR and lenses.  I have to agree that I didn't need the extra weight (particularly considering that my waste line already offers much opportunity for future weight loss).  While there are very few experiences comparable to the incredible vistas of remote mountain lakes, my memory fades quickly.  However, I find that my motivation to pack in the camera is not simply recording a memory so it stays fresh.  Instead, I'm motivated by capturing images that point out individual aspects of my experience that day, whether it be small flowers I came across, maybe some logs I had to cross on the trail, or perhaps interesting reflections in the lake water.  

Right Brain:  What I love about photography is that it helps me to slow down and take in what's around me.  It takes some practice to try to see the world from the perspective of a two dimensional image.  Clearly, viewing a simple image cannot replicate the experience of actually being there, and that's probably the main reason why I'm not particularly interested in taking pictures to "freeze" or "record" the experience to remember it later.  Such an approach seems to cheapen the original experience.  However, as we all know. images can be very powerful.  In the images below, I share different aspects of my trip.

Cove Lake from Sapphire Lake

Left Brain:  We hiked from the trail head about 8 miles to our base camp at Walker Lake.  We couldn't move a muscle the rest of that day (a Wednesday), and we explored Walker Lake on Thursday.  On Friday, we took a pretty steep day hike from Walker up to Sapphire Lake, which sits right at the tree line, about 10K feet in elevation.  Sapphire Lake has an outlet which leads to Cove Lake.  This photo looks from the Sapphire outlet down to Cove Lake. 

Left Brain: Landscape photographers always say that there are two times to take photos: at sunrise and at sunset.  Those who have attempted to take landscapes during those times know why.  The light really is the best.  Unfortunately I didn't have that opportunity on the trip, so I made the best of what I had, making use of a polarizer to try to soften some of the harsh light.  Effectively, this results in what looks like a blue cast.  I've corrected some of that using Adobe Lightroom (an outstanding piece of software, a gift from my wife for Christmas last year).  Keeping the greens in the foreground looking green, while not washing out the sky is not easy...  

Whiteclouds from Sapphire Lake

Shallow Water

 Left Brain:   This image presented a real challenge to post-process.  The problem is that the original photo was overexposed in parts, but correctly exposed in other parts.  The contrast between the greens in the background and the light grays on the center log are just hard to deal with.  Further, tweaks to exposure in either direction messes with how the water looks.  It turns out that lightroom was a big help here, allowing exposure tweaks which emphasize different sections of the image histogram (i.e. I was able to lighten the image, but then bring down the lightest parts of the image so they didn't get blown out).  I'm still working on my post processing skills, but I think that the image turned out OK.

Pine and Flowers

Right Brain:  This is one of those images that I look at and just like.  I'm not sure exactly why, nor am I sure what the image is trying to say.  What I do like is the contrasting colors, with the range of brown/orange you see in the pine against the vibrant greens below.  What a range of colors you come across in the forest!

 

Rocks Growing Rocks

Right Brain:  We came across this on a day hike.  What caught my eye first was the difference in colors of the two rocks, with the brown flat rock on top of the more gray rock.  Next, plants have found a home where they can grow and thrive, seemingly right through the larger gray rock. Great colors at play here.

Big rock, small flowers

Yellow Flower

Left Brain:   For me, what makes this picture is the background.  This photo, probably more than any of the others, made packing in the macro lens (60mm micro f/2.8) worth the effort.  These flowers are not your typical flower.  They are pretty small, the bloom is probably the size of a pencil eraser.  One of the most difficult tasks for shooting hand-held with a macro lens is getting the right part of the flower to be in focus.  As you can see, the depth of field is pretty narrow.  It just so happens that I got lucky with this one.

Pink flowers

 Right Brain:  We came across these little flowers quite frequently.  They are really small (even smaller than the yellow flowers above).  Macro shots of small stuff are pretty fun to take.  The only downside is that you have to get down on the level of the flower to get the right view and composition.  I love how the pink stands out against the green.  

Flower Bush on the water

 Right Brain:  When we go backpacking, there are basically only two things for most folks to do.  First, you can go fishing.  Second, you can take a nap.  That's pretty much all there is, especially if you are exhausted after the 8 mile hike in the day before.  The problem is, and I know that those die hard fishermen out there are going to take strong issue with this, the fishing can get pretty boring if they aren't at least nibbling.  Enter the camera.  You can take all kinds of pictures while you are sitting by the bank, waiting for that 5 lb. monster trout to take the bait.  This photo, along with several of the macro flower shots I took, are products of multitasking while fishing.  I like the reflections in the wavy water in this photo, but despite my post-processing efforts, I still feel that the photo is missing something.  Maybe it's just too dark?

Cool textures

Right Brain:   I find textures fascinating.  Old fallen trees are great subjects for all kinds of texture shots, as these three shots show.   

Standard wood with a twist

Dead tree reborn

Right Brain:   I love the juxtaposition in this photo, with a fantastic old fallen tree surrounding new plant growth.
 

Single flower

Right Brain:   Finally, another macro shot of a wildflower.  The background and depth of field in this shot almost give it an ethereal look.  That was just how it turned out.  I didn't apply any magical blurring in Photoshop.  I just tuned the overall exposure in Lightroom.  

Left Brain:   In summary, you can see that I really enjoyed playing with the macro lens.  I didn't pack in a tripod or artificial lighting for the macro shots.  My pack was heavy enough as is!  Consequently, I relied on a lot of luck to get the shots that I got.  When focusing close in on a small subject, the depth of field is very shallow.  That effect is present in several of the photos above.  I love the isolation that it provides.  However, even a small breeze can shift the focus point just enough that the subject of the photo ends up blurred as part of the background.  So, with me being the amateur that I am, I usually employ the shotgun approach of take a few shots and hope that something turns out.


Left Brain:   The above photos were shot with my Nikon N80 (yes, that is a 35 mm film SLR).  I shot Fuji Velvia, some color print film, and some black and white film (mostly Ilford Delta 100/400).  I had the rolls scanned when they were processed.  I did some post processing in Adobe Lightroom, as was mentioned.  Why did I shoot film instead of taking my Nikon D70 on the trip?  The first motivation was replacement cost of the camera (replacing/fixing the film camera is much cheaper than replacing/fixing the DSLR).  The second motivation was the desire to shoot some analog black and white shots.  I have darkroom equipment and still enjoy old fashioned film and print development.  Lastly, I love how real slides look, even if they are hard to show to people in that format.  This was my first real effort with seeing how things turned out by shooting color slides, and then attempting to post process a scanned image.  I have to say that it took me a while to get the hang of all the quirky details of my digital setup (between my Epson R1800 printer, my Spyder2Express monitor calibrator, and Lightroom, all running on a Windows XP box), but I think that I'm at least converging on an approach that seems to be working.  Comments are welcome.