This past Friday, the second in a row, I woke up at 2:30am and drove down to Mount Rainier National Park to photograph wildflowers at sunrise. I have sold a lot of images of Mount Rainier over the years, so it is worth taking the time out of my busy travel schedule to do the quick round trip for just 1 hour of shooting. I parked my car at 5:15am and ran up the trail in about 20 minutes to my favorite flower meadows on Mazama Ridge. I’m always surprised that I never encounter any other photographers up there at sunrise, but I also only visit during the week to avoid the weekend crowds. For anyone still planning a trip to Rainier, the wildflowers are at their peak, however, I would not describe this year’s bloom as more than ordinary. I did not encounter any diverse fields of wildflowers and the clouds from the day before had vanished, but I still hoped to create a new unique image. All of my previous well-known photos of wildflowers at Mount Rainier were created using medium and large format film cameras. What a pain in the ass that was. With my large format camera in particular, I had to compose the image using a dark cloth, focusing loupe, and dark ground glass where the image was upside down and reversed, spot meter the scene, stop down to f32, place a Singh-Ray non-LB Warming Polarizer on the lens, position the grad filter correctly, and hope that the wind stopped blowing for a 10-30 second exposure because I was using Fuji Velvia 50 film rated at ISO 25 due to reciprocity failure. Still with me? Let me just state unequivocally that creating this image with my dSLR was a lot easier. I like this picture because of the soft warm light illuminating the lupine in the foreground.
Pictures don’t get any fresher than this! I woke up at 2:30am today and drove down to Mount Rainier National Park to photograph the wildflowers around Reflection Lake at sunrise. I have always wanted to photograph the mountain and reflection in the lake with rosy spireas in bloom, and today I finally timed it right. I was surprised by how many photographers were there for a Friday. I have gotten spoiled in Alaska not having to shoot around other people. A slight breeze or surfacing fish occasionally disturbed the reflection, so this is as close to perfect as it got. I am happy with what I created.
For those of you aspiring to photograph wildflowers at Mount Rainier this summer, I did a quick drive up to Paradise before driving back to Seattle, and can confirm that the wildflowers probably need 1-2 more weeks to peak. There are tons of paintbrush and other wildflowers along the side of the road, but the big fields of lupine are only just starting to bloom. I hope to get back down there late next week before I return to Alaska on August 23rd.
My image “Spray Park Wildflowers 1” is featured as the double page opener of the hiking feature in the June 2010 issue of Seattle Met. Spray Park is my favorite alpine location at Mount Rainier National Park and is the closest side of the mountain to my home in Seattle. During the brief summer hiking season, I depart my house in the early afternoon, drive for about 3 hours, and hike the 3 miles up to the wildflower meadows to photograph the sunset. It is both a blessing and a curse if the wind is not blowing, a blessing because the fields of lupine and paintbrush are not blowing around in the wind, but a curse because of the swarms of blood-thirsty mosquitoes that rival any that I have seen in Alaska or Canada. Spray Park is higher than Paradise on the south side of the mountain, so the wildflowers peak about 1 week later, typically mid-August. Based on the cold summer that we are having, I estimate that the wildflowers are going to be a little late this year, which is similar to the year that I created this image during the last week of August.
I am pleased to share my latest publishing accomplishment. My “Paradise Wildflowers” image from Mount Rainier National Park is the June 2010 cover on Alaska Airlines! This is also my 2nd cover with them this year. This picture is my all-time most successful art print and has been licensed numerous times since I created it in 2003. Most of my regular readers will know that I shot all of my landscape images up until last year with a Pentax 67 system. One of the challenges of that system was that I had limited depth-of-field compared to a 35mm system. In order to overcome that limitation, I created this image with Toyo 4×5 view camera, a Rodenstock 65mm large format lens, and a Horseman 6×9 roll film back. (Did I lose you, yet?) With the large format camera, I tilted the lens so that the flowers would be close to the camera while keeping the summit of Mount Rainier in focus. I also used my Singh-Ray Warming Polarizer and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter with Fuji Velvia film. I think that the exposure was about 10 seconds at f32, which is a life-time when waiting for a slight breeze to stop rustling the wildflowers. Now when I photograph flower landscapes like this, I use my Canon 5DmkII with a wide-angle lens with camera settings more like f16, 1/4 second, and 200 ISO. Since this was the first image that I ever took with my 4×5, I was still learning how to use it that morning. I mentioned that I used a 6×9 roll film back. All of my images that I shot were the 6×9 format except for 1 frame that overlapped the frame before it. That image perfectly cropped itself in the camera to 6×7 which is my favorite photo that you see here. Beginners luck?
I’ve generally been content with my Canon 17-40mm f4 lens, but have always wondered about the benefits of sharper glass. While investigating my options, I learned about the Zeiss lenses designed for Canon. I contacted Zeiss USA about borrowing a few of their lenses and was pleased that they agreed. I requested the 28mm f2 and 35mm f2, because they are the focal range that I most often shoot.
The Zeiss lenses are manual focus and designed to fit directly on a Canon EOS mount. I liked the smooth action when adjusting the focus barrel, but especially liked the hyperfocal focusing scale on each lens. Ever since I switched over to shooting digital landscapes, I’ve missed my Pentax 67 prime lenses which had hyperfocal scales. On my Canon 17-40mm f4 lens there isn’t one since it is a zoom, so I just bump the ∞ mark to the right slightly of the focus line to accomplish the same effect. I typically push my depth-of-field more than a lot of photographers. I don’t mind the foreground being slightly soft as the viewer enters my composition, but it quickly becomes sharp throughout the majority of the image. I make sure that my background subject is always in focus by reviewing my images at 100% and adjusting my ∞ mark if necessary.
A lot of photographers prefer to shoot landscape images backed off from the foreground so that they can shoot closer to f11 to avoid lens diffraction. I prefer my compositions to be super tight and down low, so I compromise by using smaller apertures to get more depth-of-field. At f16-f22 lens diffraction occurs. It is clearly visible in my results, but I prefer it to losing depth-of-field.
When reviewed on my Canon 5DmkII’s LCD, the images I took with the Zeiss lenses appeared bolder than the images I had taken with my 17-40. When I downloaded them to my laptop, I could clearly see that the images were much sharper edge-to-edge than when I had used my zoom. Whereas my 17-40 only felt in focus in the middle 60% of the image, the Zeiss lenses were sharp throughout 90% or more of the image.
I also compared the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 II and Canon 35mm f1.4 to the Zeiss lenses. My test results are available on my blog. Please feel free to download any of these sample images and view them side-by-side. All of these test images are from my un-adjusted RAW files that were created in real world shooting conditions. I took the same image using the same settings. I also used a Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer on all of my test images to reduce the glare on the leaves.
My biggest surprise was that my Canon 17-40mm f4 lens created images that were not as disappointing as I would have thought compared to those created with the Zeiss lenses. However, now that I can see the difference I don’t care for the barrel-distortion created by my zoom. I was not impressed with the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 II. Perhaps my hyperfocal approximation was slightly off since I was unfamiliar with this lens? However, I was conservative in my hyperfocal focusing in that I barely moved the ∞ mark to the right of the focus line. I was totally disappointed with the Canon 35mm f1.4, which was the least contrasty of the lenses I tested and nowhere near as sharp as the Zeiss lenses.
I am so impressed with the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2 ZE and 35mm f2 ZE that I am purchasing them (with a modest discount from Zeiss USA). They cost $1283 and $1004 respectively. The 35mm f2 is a significant improvement and the 28mm f2 is a slight improvement over my Canon 17-40mm f4. This corroborates the general buzz that I have heard about these lenses. My test results convinced me that the Carl Zeiss lenses are a better investment than upgrading to the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 II, especially if one doesn’t require auto-focus. For anyone not in the market to upgrade their lenses, I think that the Canon 17-40mm f4 is still a great value. I will continue to use it to shoot super-wide landscape scenes until I can test/afford a better lens. However, if you are in the market to upgrade your lens arsenal, you won’t be disappointed with these Carl Zeiss options.
My Reflection Lake Sunrise image is featured prominently in a new Washington State tourism advertisement. This ad will be shown in markets throughout North America during the next year. If you are looking for an exciting travel destination, Washington offers an incredibly diverse experience. It is one of the few places where you can experience islands, beaches, mountains, glaciers, forests, & deserts all during the same trip. I always recommend early September to first time visitors. It has the most reliable dry weather and the summer crowds are gone. Are you ready to experiencewa?
I created this image during a private photography tour last July. The weather was overcast with a light drizzle all 5 days, which made for perfect rainforest shooting conditions. We spent each afternoon visiting the Quinault, Hoh, & Sol Duc Valleys and ended each day by shooting sunset at Ruby & Second Beach. The fastest way to improve your composition skills is to shoot in the chaos of the rainforest. If you are interested, you can join my upcoming Olympic National Park Photography Tour. My tour groups are small & exclusive so that I can provide my clients with personal attention. I accept a maximum of 4 photographers & have still 2 openings available for my April 22-25 tour. To sign up, please email me at jon@cornforthimages.com.
This is another beautiful green temperate rainforest image that I took last week while leading a private photography tour of Olympic National Park. This image is from the Sol Duc Valley on the way up to the iconic Sol Duc Falls. About 1/2 way to the falls is a very scenic little stream covered in green moss that is often photographed. About 3 winters ago, one of the big storms caused a terrible amount of flooding in the area, and a lot of the moss that covered the boulders was washed away. I was out there last year and did not even take a picture while leading a private workshop. This year, I decided to walk up hill to scout for better photo ops. A good 10-15 minutes above the bridge that crosses the stream, I found some much more pleasing mossy boulders than lower down and proceeded to spend several hours taking pictures.
This is my favorite image. This vine maple overhung a nice section of moss covered rocks and had some really cool delicate branches. Even though there was no wind blowing, this image was incredibly difficult to photograph as the leaves were ever so gently bouncing, making long exposures blurry. I was trying for the largest depth of field possible by shooting within 2 feet of the foreground leaves while trying not to fall into the stream on the slippery rocks. I finally got one image while shooting at f16, 3.2 sec, and ISO 400. You gotta love the backlit leaves during a photo shoot in the rainforest! Also, you better like the color green.
I just returned from a 1 week private photography workshop/tour that I lead for a client of Olympic National Park. The trip started last weekend with a sunny 80° day in Seattle. We drove down to Mount Rainier National Park for the first night with ambitions to photograph Reflection Lake at sunrise. The weather changed while we were sleeping, and when we woke up it was cloudy and 40°. So after getting skunked, we started our drive out to our main destination for the week in typical NW crummy weather. I kept telling Dan, that this weather was going to be great for our ambitions to photograph in the rainforest, but that it might not be great for photographing beach sunsets. Over the next 4 days, it mostly drizzled or poured on us, but we took advantage of the weather to photograph the spectacular greens of the temperate rainforest. I spent a lot of time walking around looking for patterns and unique mossy things to photograph. I really felt like I pushed myself photographically in a way that I have never done before in the rainforest. It is not an easy place to see the pictures through the chaos of branches and leaves. I was especially drawn to backlit leaves that just glowed green. I had fun, but it is again sunny and 80° here in Seattle. I’ll be outside working on my tan this afternoon.
The new issue of Backpacker is out, and I am pleased to announce that I have the cover image! One funny note, though, after they chose this image for the cover they asked me if they could change the yelow fall colored larch trees back to green since this would be a summer issue. If a publisher is going to pay me, I really do not mind what they need to do to my photos to make it work. Next time I might offer to make the color change for them, as I think they just grabbed the Yellow Saturation slider and moved the overall Hue towards Green. How does it compare to my original image to you?
Pictures don’t get any fresher than this! I woke up at 2:30am today and drove down to 
During the month of April, Zeiss USA generously loaned me 2 lenses, the Carl Zeiss 
