It seems that years of hard-work and dedication are paying off. My 10 year anniversary of being a full-time photographer is coming up this June, and I have experienced a lot of editorial success lately, including my new hiking and backpacking photography article in the May 2011 issue of Popular Photography. In the article, I share my secrets for creating dramatic images away from parking lot viewpoints. Most readers are never going to travel to the ends of the Earth and spend weeks camped out like I do, but hopefully my article will motivate more photographers to get more exercise, enjoy nature, and find their own unique images rather than settle for the same-old viewpoints. I created the double-page opening image of Forbidden Peak at sunset while backpacking in North Cascades National Park. It was a long hike up to Sahale Arm where I camped for several nights with some friends. If you are motivated, I highly recommend this backpacking trip high into the North Cascades. The views are some of the best that can be found in Washington. I created this image with my Pentax 67II medium format camera, Pentax 90mm f2.8 lens, Singh-Ray Warming Polarizer, tripod, and Fuji Velvia 50 film. I scanned it on my Imacon Photo scanner and adjusted the masterfile in whatever version of Photoshop I was using at the time. Readers will also note that I included a photo of my Fstopgear Tilopa BC packed with all my equipment spilled out that I currently use to create landscape photos.
Click here to purchase a print of my Forbidden Peak Sunset image.
Picture Lake is one of the most iconic, and thus photographed, locations in my home state of Washington. The reflection of Mt Shuksan from the lake on a clear day is postcard perfect. In September, I returned to Picture Lake for the first time in a several years while instructing 2 private photography tour clients from Mexico. They had never been here before, so they were giddy with the perfect shooting conditions. Over the years, I have sold my original medium format film image of this scene numerous times, but I prefer this updated digital photo to the original. I created this image with my Canon 5DmkII, Carl Zeiss 28mm f2 ZE lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer and 4-stop Soft GND filter on a tripod with minimal processing in Aperture 3. As always, the secret ingredient of this image was lots of patience waiting for hikers to walk out of the scene and a perfect reflection when the breeze stopped blowing.
The most important thing I teach my photography tour clients is how to anticipate a shot. Let’s use my new image of the fall colors on Mazama Ridge as an example of when to shoot. When I was at Mount Rainier National Park last Friday, the sky was clear blue without a single cloud on the horizon. I knew that the best image in these conditions would be when the angle of the sunlight was a few degrees above the horizon and still yellow or orange in color. Experience has taught me where the sun would go down, but I confirmed my guess by using my SunSeeker app on my iPhone. I wanted to shoot this scene as the sunset light settled into the trees and danced across the foliage in front of my camera. The tree shadows added some mystery to an otherwise beautiful but non-dramatic scene. This light only lasted for about 30 seconds before the foliage went into complete shade. I used my Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 ZE lens along with my Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter to create this image using only 1 exposure which required minimal processing.
Last week, I helped 2 photography clients from Mexico City experience and shoot Washington’s fall colors. With all of my travels out of state, I no longer have as much time to shoot when I am home, so it was nice to do some photography in my old stomping grounds in the Cascades. For some reason, every time that I have been out shooting in the last month, I have experienced clear blue skies which has made dramatic light conditions very difficult to find. Of course, there are worse things than driving around in the mountains on sunny days. On the first day of our time together, precipitation clung to the North Cascades as I drove up I-5 to Picture Lake. I thought that our timing would be ideal for photographing fall colors and was not disappointed. As the clouds swirled and briefly parted late in the afternoon, my clients and I were able to photograph Mt Shuksan’s perfect reflection. The sun sets behind a mountain ridge at about 4:30, causing the foreground and trees on the opposite side of the lake to usually become too dark, but on this afternoon the lifting fog helped to soften the harsh shadows. I used my Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer slightly backed off from full polarization along with my Singh-Ray 4-stop Soft Graduated Neutral Density filter placed above the foreground foliage to balance the exposure. I also chose to photograph this scene with my Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 ZE lens in order to keep Mt Shuksan from becoming too small in the overall composition while still being able to have enough depth of field at f16 to include the foliage along the shore in the foreground.
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?
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 