Mount Rainier

Some months ago, I was invited on a sunrise photography jaunt with a few newly met Seattle peeps. I agreed, even though to be honest all the excellent photographers in this part of the world are quite intimidating. Added to this fact is I am tripod-less (long story)  and using a DSLR which is great for starting up, but could be a bit niftier 😉 It’s all a bit woe is me, but I do like taking photos, so screw it I am going to give blogging my work a shot.

We drove out to Mount Rainier which is a “stratovolcano” about an hours drive south of Seattle city. It is 4,392 metres high! Whew! It sort of craps all over the highest peak we have in my home state of Western Australia, which is at least a third of the size!

After some trouble finding a money spot for photos (this involved a back and forth trudging in the dark and fog!) we eventually found the area which gave us a great view of Rainier and had some cool lake reflection happening. I was happy exploring the area in general and probably would have gotten lost in the forest and forgotten about sunrise at this point! Another guy with us was also into running off the beaten track and he saw deer! Lucky man! (I am Australian – I get excited by the deer ok!)

I have finally fiddled with the images I took a bit on photomatix, we don’t have our regular computers here yet, so my editing abilities are limited. End results I think are “ok” but not “great” They are only 3 bracket shots, I guess I could have done it manually and gotten more, but I am pretty sure at that point a tripod would have been involved.

 So – the first one is my favourite of these two – I just wish I could fix up the cloudline a bit exposure-wise.  The second one is ok, it is just a little generic and not the most exciting way to present a mountain reflection! I would like to head out to the area again,  explore a bit more and hopefully see some better cloud action!