Another Night, another Mountain Photograph

An even more 'elemental' photo of the mountain, showing its bones clearly.

I resisted the scene of yesterday’s Mt. Rainier photo, this time with my big camera, the Phase One digital back with a (classic, medium format) Mamiya Sekor C 210mm lens.

In addition to using my best equipment, I also chose a different time of day based on what I’d observed near sunset yesterday. This time, I picked a time of day (around 2pm) when the sun angle was ideal for using a polarizing filter the increase the contrast of the shot.

If you compare today’s photo to yesterdays, you’ll see that the rocks are darker but the brightness of the snow is preserved. The contrast range within the rock formations is also clearer.

I did this by rotating a circular polarizer until the sky was optimally dark, and then I took a few shots with minor variations, and sorted out the best one during digital development in Capture One software.

Finally, I used a special landscape feature of Affinity Photo, a haze remover. Haze is a combination of low contrast from scattered light (and the polarizer largely take care of that), and a blue hue to the image from the intervening atmosphere (all 25 miles or so of it between me and the mountain from Graham, WA).

When all the magic was done, I had the photo you see above. It brings the mountain much closer by removing atmospheric effects. In addition, even though the lenses are almost the same focal length, there is a lot more surrounding detail in the photo thanks to the larger sensor of the Phase One digital back (IQ4 150).