A <your collective noun here> of Clouds
A <your collective noun here> of Clouds
Above, around Mt. Rainier. What a crazy quilt of clouds.
Donna and I drove around Enumclaw, WA trying to find a spot to take a photograph of these wild-ass clouds around Mt. Rainier. We finally found a big farm with a wide open view of the festivities.
This is a three-image panorama of the scene. I deliberately underexposed it a wee bit to get an exposure that was correct for the clouds, rather than the mountain or the farmland in the foreground. Glad I made that choice.
To the eye, the sky was painfully bright—the sun is just out of the picture to the left of center. But dimmed down a bit, the clouds take on solid shapes and their convoluted masses stand out clearly. Thanks to quality glass in the lens, the tiniest details in the clouds stand out well.
Shot with the Zeiss Otus 100mm lens on the Sony α1 camera. Glad I used some of my best equipment; with the sun so close and the brightness range so extreme, this was a really challenging shot technically. The hardware handled it gracefully.
I did try to process it for a more ‘natural’ look but I prefer the straight out of camera version above.
I had to do a lot of deep manipulation of the image to tame the clouds, retain the right mix of illumination and color in the lower mountains, bring out the details in the foreground, etc. The photo is of the clouds, so I decided to develop the image to the brightness level of the clouds, the shot at the top of the page, and I like that approach the best.
On the other hand, if you are simply mad about Mt. Rainier and want to see those details up close and personal, I am happy to oblige.
That one did get a bit of sharpening, but just for the fun of it.