Stevens Canyon, Mount Rainier National Park

On Sunday morning, after shooting the sunrise I opted not to continue all the way up into the Sunrise area, but rather take the long route through the park south and around to Paradise. Along the way I found myself compelled to stop and take in some of the amazing scenes. Mount Rainier seems to radiate valleys outward, and I found that as I drove along it could be perfectly clear in one, and then the next valley could be completely filled with cloud and fog.

This was the case when I came around the bend at the southern tip of the park and started to drive north up Stevens Canyon. Across the canyon the hillsides would slip in and out of cloud cover and I was had to stop to photograph it. The cloud and fog was thick enough that beyond the hillsides directly across the valley, the much higher mountain faces behind couldn't even be seen.

I utilized a feature of my camera (Nikon D90) that I often overlook, which are the Picture Control settings. Some time back I created a custom setting that produces black and white images, with red filtration, and that's how I shot these frames. I normally do my black and white conversions from scratch, but I was quite happy with the versions produced from the camera directly, and consequently worked with those JPG files instead. I used a levels adjustment to bring the dark grays down closer to black (added contrast) and then I applied a subtle color toning that I think suits the ethereal quality of the image.

Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@31mm | f/8 | 1/125s | ISO200 | Handheld
Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@82mm | f/8 | 1/125s | ISO200 | Handheld

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