Lenticular clouds, La Sal Mountains

Technical Notes on image capture:

As we pulled up to Panorama Point, just after 4:30 PM, I was fairly convinced that the scene before me was my best opportunity to capture an image that fully communicated the essence of my developing vision. I had told myself (and others) countless times the entire weekend that I was particulary interested in creating images that captured an essence of the "life" of Arches National Park, rather than being once again distracted by the landscape and landmarks. The life in the environment of Arches is such an amazing display of gritty and tough, yet beautiful and delicate. It is life finding it's way, somehow, someway to survive another day amidst the harsh conditions. Low and behold, the landscape was once again proved too irresistible.

My highest priority at the time of image capture on this set of exposures was to preserve every fine detail that I could within the lenticular clouds hovering over the La Sal Mountains. Lenticular clouds were not something that I was familiar with until we moved out to Colorado from Indiana in 2004, outside of one I had blindly observed over Mount Shasta in 2002. Since my first observation of this phenomena, I had been drawn to capture the mystique of these wind-shaped clouds.

Foregrounds in high desert environments, while beautiful to our eye, can often be incredibly busy and lack continuity when flattened into 2-dimensions, due to the large spaces and gaps between bundles of vegetation. While I was able to create a few images that I do believe could be successful, reducing the effects of the foreground and placing the focus on the clouds and high peaks in the distance were my top priority. In the end, it was one of those "why write a paragraph, when I can say all that I need to say in a sentence" type of situations. Less was certainly more, in this instance. I captured about 45 bracketed exposures of this scene, exploring variance in focal lengths, subjects, apertures and other aspects of composition. In the end, the composition shown in this image was my favorite, ultimately due to minimal distractions from the busy desert environment towards the subject. Depth of field was my primary challenge. An aperture of 5.6 was chosen for a couple of reasons. One, it had returned pleasing results in a similar (yet very different) situation on a past occasion in the Verde Lakes Basin. Secondly, the nearest object to my position that I chose to include in the image were the bluffs overlooking Salt Wash Rapids in the Colorado River Canyon, roughly 3-4 miles away. So, depth of field or hyperfocal distance issues weren't something I had to put a lot of consideration into for this situation in comparison to a wide-angle situation that might have included a pinon pine in the foreground 20 or 30 feet away. Due to the fact that I was focusing essentially at infinity and the foreground of my scene was several thousand feet beyond the 143 foot hyperfocal distance for f5.6 at 70mm (I always have a cheat sheet with me), that entire decision on hyperfocal sharpness was not applicable. Rather, I opted to focus on the lower edge of the lenticular cloud (it appeared to be slightly further east than the crest of the La Sal Mountains) with extreme care being taken to preserve as much detail in the cloud as possible, with less concern over losing a small amount of detail in the busy foreground bluffs. In aperture priority mode, the shutter speed came in at 1/180 with the ISO set at 100 for fine detail. In hindsight, I probably should have bracketed an exposure at f8 for sweet spot comparisons, but the results were pleasing to me at 5.6. A circular polarizer and UV filter were utilized at the time of capture.

Technical Notes on Post Processing

This image did not require any blending of exposures in its current form. A curves layer was added with unique curves added to each of the Red, Green and Blue channels. The Red channel contained points at (Input/Output) 0/0, 92/39, 180/191 and 218/254. The Green channel contained points at 0/0, 64/63, 182/214 and 255/255. The blue channel contained points only at 0/27 and 255/227. The lower 1/3rd of the image was lightly masked in the foreground areas with a 30% brush and the layer as a whole had an opacity of 72%. A channel mixer layer is the layer responsible for the black and white conversion. Within the channel mixer, red was set to 106 with blue and green both at -2 in the monochrome setting. A dodge/burn layer was also implemented with dodging in most of the sun-exposed aspects, in particular, the mountain tops, for highlight boost. Burning was applied lightly in portions of the sky and clouds, in particular the upper right corner of the image to increase focus on the lenticular clouds without venturing up into the corner where the less attractive clouds rested. A soft layer of 15.3 pixel gaussian blur was applied at an opacity of 33% to all areas of the image outside of the lenticular cloud. The foreground areas with the rough rocky edges and busy vegetation benefitted the most from this layer, taking the emphasis away from their edges and on to that of the clouds and peaks as desired. Due to this being a black and white image, a color noise reduction layer was added by creating a new layer, setting its blending mode to Color and adding a gaussian blur. The sharpness of the image is not sacrificed by this blur layer at 100% because the color itself is the only thing being affected (and this is a monochrome image). A high pass contast layer was added in order to put the finishing touches on the contrast of the scene. The settings for the layer were overlay mode, 20% opacity, with the "Blend if Gray" settings bracketed at 50/70 for the black and 185/215 for the white. The high pass filter was run at 53.5% for the desired contrast. No sharpening has been applied. The final step was to shore up the composition by removing 395 pixels of space from the top, 96 pixels from the bottom, 234 pixels from the right and 226 pixels from the left edge of the image, leaving the final file dimensions at 3812x2357.

Creative Notes:

The entire afternoon, I had been waiting and wondering. As the lenticular clouds slowly assembled little by little over the La Sal Mountains into their final masterpiece, my mind (as it does whenever I spot long lenticular clouds and snowcapped peaks) immediately lept to the vision of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico image. While on several occasions I had thought it would be interesting to try to re-create similar scenes of several of Adams' images in the most similar setting that I could find in Colorado, on this occasion, my mind immediately began considering all of the things I might need to do to avoid such comparisons. I really wanted to avoid that reaction from anyone familiar with Adams from saying to themself "lenticular clouds, snowcapped peaks in the distance...just another Moonrise ripoff...".

From familiarity with the area as well as some research performed on the moonrise/moonset times, I at least knew that the situation would not be fully re-creating itself on that evening. There was no moon rising over the La Sal Mountains to extend the scene and provide additional depth, nor were there any towns or cemetaries, outside of the abandoned Wolfe Ranch, for at least 17 miles in any direction. At 4:30 PM on 10/23/2009 in Moab, UT the moon was indeed setting. But, it was setting at a 246 degrees from North azimuth at moonset, nearly 100 degrees off from my line of vision towards roughly 135 degrees from North in the direction of the La Sal Mountains from Panorama Point. Secondly, unlike the Sangre de Cristo (the mountains shown in Moonrise and one of the longest mountain chains on earth, running for 242 miles through Colorado and New Mexico), the La Sal Mountains are a very small chain of mountains, spanning only about 18 miles from one end to the other, suited for much different compositions. From my vantage point, I initially composed the scene with my wide angle 17-40L lens, simply to see if it was worth my time to even attempt to compose the scene similar to Moonrise, but the scene simply was not set up for it due to a lack of continuity in the mountains beneath a focal length of 40mm. Ideally, from that vantage point, a focal length of about 50-60mm would have been ideal for a panorama of the entire range through the viewfinder, but I only had my 17-40mm and 70-300mm lenses available (all focal lengths mentioned do not include the crop factor of the Canon Digital Rebel XSi...these are simply the values of the lens out of the box).

On the mention of focal length comparisons, I will venture off into a couple of brief tangents regarding the subject in theory, as well as the subject from a creative standpoint. The field of view crop factor (focal length multiplier) of my current digital body, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi is 1.6x that of a 35mm "full-frame" camera. So, the moment that my 17-40mm lens is placed on my camera, it immediately becomes a 28-65mm lens and the moment my 70-300mm lens is placed on my camera, it becomes a 114-487mm lens due to that focal length multiplier. From another angle, if one looks at the specs from Ansel Adams' Moonrise image, shown in his original notes you will find that his focal lenth is shown in his notes to be 600mm. However, this is not 600mm focal length in a 35mm format camera range; it is 600mm in an 8x10 view camera format. A rough value to get a general idea between the two is that the 35mm format focal length is roughly .1495x the focal length of an 8x10 view camera. So, the 600mm focal length Adams created that image at is roughly equivalent to a focal length of 90mm in 35mm format or roughly a 56mm focal length in my camera (90 divided by the 1.6 crop factor). Additionally worth noting is that the town of Hernandez, NM is roughly 40 miles west of the crest of the Sangre de Cristo, with an elevation variance of 5800' at Hernandez to 13102' at the top of Truchas Peak. In comparison, my distance from my tripod at Panorama Point to the crest of the La Sal Mountains was roughly 25 miles with an elevational variance of 4800' at Panorama Point to 12,721' at the summit of Mount Peale. While ththe extra 500' feet of elevation was largely insignificant, the difference of 15 miles between the two scenes ends up affecting the contents of the composition more than you might think. In composition, at 70mm (the closest focal length that I could attain to the 56mm equivalent of Moonrise), my composition with a strong foreground element in close proximity (as Adams did with the actual town of Hernandez in Moonrise), was rendered with roughly 2/3rds of the image non-sky and 1/3rd of the image as sky. Moonrise on the other hand rendered as roughly 1/3rd of the image as non-sky and 2/3rds of the image as sky, but the presence of the moon itself in that image was able to offset that ratio to almost 1/2 and 1/2.

So, while we were both standing at valley level in the high deserts of the American Southwest with desert brush foregrounds benath broad, long lenticular clouds hovering perfectly above 12000' snowcapped peaks, the images that each of us were able to create out of that situation are vastly different. The question that I will always ask myself is whether or not this was indeed the best image that I could create in my situation. I am certain that the answer is "yes" in Adams' case. Moreover though, the moral of the story is that sometimes knowing a vast amount of details about a well-known photograph doesn't just allow an avid fan the opportunity to try to re-create a similar version of that image - it also allows a photographer with a vision the ability to avoid re-creating a well-known scene and facing the ever harsh comparisons bound to prevent that image from ever succeeding.

Lenticular clouds, La Sal Mountains

Technical Notes on image capture:

As we pulled up to Panorama Point, just after 4:30 PM, I was fairly convinced that the scene before me was my best opportunity to capture an image that fully communicated the essence of my developing vision. I had told myself (and others) countless times the entire weekend that I was particulary interested in creating images that captured an essence of the "life" of Arches National Park, rather than being once again distracted by the landscape and landmarks. The life in the environment of Arches is such an amazing display of gritty and tough, yet beautiful and delicate. It is life finding it's way, somehow, someway to survive another day amidst the harsh conditions. Low and behold, the landscape was once again proved too irresistible.

My highest priority at the time of image capture on this set of exposures was to preserve every fine detail that I could within the lenticular clouds hovering over the La Sal Mountains. Lenticular clouds were not something that I was familiar with until we moved out to Colorado from Indiana in 2004, outside of one I had blindly observed over Mount Shasta in 2002. Since my first observation of this phenomena, I had been drawn to capture the mystique of these wind-shaped clouds.

Foregrounds in high desert environments, while beautiful to our eye, can often be incredibly busy and lack continuity when flattened into 2-dimensions, due to the large spaces and gaps between bundles of vegetation. While I was able to create a few images that I do believe could be successful, reducing the effects of the foreground and placing the focus on the clouds and high peaks in the distance were my top priority. In the end, it was one of those "why write a paragraph, when I can say all that I need to say in a sentence" type of situations. Less was certainly more, in this instance. I captured about 45 bracketed exposures of this scene, exploring variance in focal lengths, subjects, apertures and other aspects of composition. In the end, the composition shown in this image was my favorite, ultimately due to minimal distractions from the busy desert environment towards the subject. Depth of field was my primary challenge. An aperture of 5.6 was chosen for a couple of reasons. One, it had returned pleasing results in a similar (yet very different) situation on a past occasion in the Verde Lakes Basin. Secondly, the nearest object to my position that I chose to include in the image were the bluffs overlooking Salt Wash Rapids in the Colorado River Canyon, roughly 3-4 miles away. So, depth of field or hyperfocal distance issues weren't something I had to put a lot of consideration into for this situation in comparison to a wide-angle situation that might have included a pinon pine in the foreground 20 or 30 feet away. Due to the fact that I was focusing essentially at infinity and the foreground of my scene was several thousand feet beyond the 143 foot hyperfocal distance for f5.6 at 70mm (I always have a cheat sheet with me), that entire decision on hyperfocal sharpness was not applicable. Rather, I opted to focus on the lower edge of the lenticular cloud (it appeared to be slightly further east than the crest of the La Sal Mountains) with extreme care being taken to preserve as much detail in the cloud as possible, with less concern over losing a small amount of detail in the busy foreground bluffs. In aperture priority mode, the shutter speed came in at 1/180 with the ISO set at 100 for fine detail. In hindsight, I probably should have bracketed an exposure at f8 for sweet spot comparisons, but the results were pleasing to me at 5.6. A circular polarizer and UV filter were utilized at the time of capture.

Technical Notes on Post Processing

This image did not require any blending of exposures in its current form. A curves layer was added with unique curves added to each of the Red, Green and Blue channels. The Red channel contained points at (Input/Output) 0/0, 92/39, 180/191 and 218/254. The Green channel contained points at 0/0, 64/63, 182/214 and 255/255. The blue channel contained points only at 0/27 and 255/227. The lower 1/3rd of the image was lightly masked in the foreground areas with a 30% brush and the layer as a whole had an opacity of 72%. A channel mixer layer is the layer responsible for the black and white conversion. Within the channel mixer, red was set to 106 with blue and green both at -2 in the monochrome setting. A dodge/burn layer was also implemented with dodging in most of the sun-exposed aspects, in particular, the mountain tops, for highlight boost. Burning was applied lightly in portions of the sky and clouds, in particular the upper right corner of the image to increase focus on the lenticular clouds without venturing up into the corner where the less attractive clouds rested. A soft layer of 15.3 pixel gaussian blur was applied at an opacity of 33% to all areas of the image outside of the lenticular cloud. The foreground areas with the rough rocky edges and busy vegetation benefitted the most from this layer, taking the emphasis away from their edges and on to that of the clouds and peaks as desired. Due to this being a black and white image, a color noise reduction layer was added by creating a new layer, setting its blending mode to Color and adding a gaussian blur. The sharpness of the image is not sacrificed by this blur layer at 100% because the color itself is the only thing being affected (and this is a monochrome image). A high pass contast layer was added in order to put the finishing touches on the contrast of the scene. The settings for the layer were overlay mode, 20% opacity, with the "Blend if Gray" settings bracketed at 50/70 for the black and 185/215 for the white. The high pass filter was run at 53.5% for the desired contrast. No sharpening has been applied. The final step was to shore up the composition by removing 395 pixels of space from the top, 96 pixels from the bottom, 234 pixels from the right and 226 pixels from the left edge of the image, leaving the final file dimensions at 3812x2357.

Creative Notes:

The entire afternoon, I had been waiting and wondering. As the lenticular clouds slowly assembled little by little over the La Sal Mountains into their final masterpiece, my mind (as it does whenever I spot long lenticular clouds and snowcapped peaks) immediately lept to the vision of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico image. While on several occasions I had thought it would be interesting to try to re-create similar scenes of several of Adams' images in the most similar setting that I could find in Colorado, on this occasion, my mind immediately began considering all of the things I might need to do to avoid such comparisons. I really wanted to avoid that reaction from anyone familiar with Adams from saying to themself "lenticular clouds, snowcapped peaks in the distance...just another Moonrise ripoff...".

From familiarity with the area as well as some research performed on the moonrise/moonset times, I at least knew that the situation would not be fully re-creating itself on that evening. There was no moon rising over the La Sal Mountains to extend the scene and provide additional depth, nor were there any towns or cemetaries, outside of the abandoned Wolfe Ranch, for at least 17 miles in any direction. At 4:30 PM on 10/23/2009 in Moab, UT the moon was indeed setting. But, it was setting at a 246 degrees from North azimuth at moonset, nearly 100 degrees off from my line of vision towards roughly 135 degrees from North in the direction of the La Sal Mountains from Panorama Point. Secondly, unlike the Sangre de Cristo (the mountains shown in Moonrise and one of the longest mountain chains on earth, running for 242 miles through Colorado and New Mexico), the La Sal Mountains are a very small chain of mountains, spanning only about 18 miles from one end to the other, suited for much different compositions. From my vantage point, I initially composed the scene with my wide angle 17-40L lens, simply to see if it was worth my time to even attempt to compose the scene similar to Moonrise, but the scene simply was not set up for it due to a lack of continuity in the mountains beneath a focal length of 40mm. Ideally, from that vantage point, a focal length of about 50-60mm would have been ideal for a panorama of the entire range through the viewfinder, but I only had my 17-40mm and 70-300mm lenses available (all focal lengths mentioned do not include the crop factor of the Canon Digital Rebel XSi...these are simply the values of the lens out of the box).

On the mention of focal length comparisons, I will venture off into a couple of brief tangents regarding the subject in theory, as well as the subject from a creative standpoint. The field of view crop factor (focal length multiplier) of my current digital body, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi is 1.6x that of a 35mm "full-frame" camera. So, the moment that my 17-40mm lens is placed on my camera, it immediately becomes a 28-65mm lens and the moment my 70-300mm lens is placed on my camera, it becomes a 114-487mm lens due to that focal length multiplier. From another angle, if one looks at the specs from Ansel Adams' Moonrise image, shown in his original notes you will find that his focal lenth is shown in his notes to be 600mm. However, this is not 600mm focal length in a 35mm format camera range; it is 600mm in an 8x10 view camera format. A rough value to get a general idea between the two is that the 35mm format focal length is roughly .1495x the focal length of an 8x10 view camera. So, the 600mm focal length Adams created that image at is roughly equivalent to a focal length of 90mm in 35mm format or roughly a 56mm focal length in my camera (90 divided by the 1.6 crop factor). Additionally worth noting is that the town of Hernandez, NM is roughly 40 miles west of the crest of the Sangre de Cristo, with an elevation variance of 5800' at Hernandez to 13102' at the top of Truchas Peak. In comparison, my distance from my tripod at Panorama Point to the crest of the La Sal Mountains was roughly 25 miles with an elevational variance of 4800' at Panorama Point to 12,721' at the summit of Mount Peale. While ththe extra 500' feet of elevation was largely insignificant, the difference of 15 miles between the two scenes ends up affecting the contents of the composition more than you might think. In composition, at 70mm (the closest focal length that I could attain to the 56mm equivalent of Moonrise), my composition with a strong foreground element in close proximity (as Adams did with the actual town of Hernandez in Moonrise), was rendered with roughly 2/3rds of the image non-sky and 1/3rd of the image as sky. Moonrise on the other hand rendered as roughly 1/3rd of the image as non-sky and 2/3rds of the image as sky, but the presence of the moon itself in that image was able to offset that ratio to almost 1/2 and 1/2.

So, while we were both standing at valley level in the high deserts of the American Southwest with desert brush foregrounds benath broad, long lenticular clouds hovering perfectly above 12000' snowcapped peaks, the images that each of us were able to create out of that situation are vastly different. The question that I will always ask myself is whether or not this was indeed the best image that I could create in my situation. I am certain that the answer is "yes" in Adams' case. Moreover though, the moral of the story is that sometimes knowing a vast amount of details about a well-known photograph doesn't just allow an avid fan the opportunity to try to re-create a similar version of that image - it also allows a photographer with a vision the ability to avoid re-creating a well-known scene and facing the ever harsh comparisons bound to prevent that image from ever succeeding.