Striated Lenticular, Mount Rainier National Park

Straited Lenticular, Mount Rainier National Park

For those tired of Mount Rainier, I apologize - since I shot from a location last week that really only afforded distant views of Mount Rainier, that's all I shot. However, since the light changed throughout my time there - daylight, sunset, twilight, and moonlit - I thought I'd just go with several interpretations back-to-back.

This was one of my earlier shots of the evening, nearly an hour before the sunset. The light was flat and not particularly interesting, but the lenticular cloud constantly changed shape and size and warranted some focus. Throughout the evening the lenticular cloud formation really consisted of two separate clouds - one forming right at the summit of Rainier, and the other floating above that. At this point the two took on very different shapes - the lower cloud not having the characteristic disk-shape at all, but rather seeming to show the turbulent high winds. The upper cloud, in contrast, striated into several separate layers - a very characteristic lenticular shape.

The black and white conversion was somewhat difficult as underlying color image is one of very muted blue tones throughout - pale blue sky, deep blue shadows. Focusing on a red-filtration the clouds popped out and developed some contrast, but throwing the foreground into a solid black silhouette - and uncharacteristic amount of negative space for me, but I think it works here. Regardless, it couldn't really be avoided if I'd wanted to - the reality was that there was simply no contrast there to begin with.

I may share one or two more Mount Rainier shots next, but will move onto other things again soon as well.

Nikon D90 | Nikon 105 Micro | f/8 | 1/320s | ISO200 | Handheld

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