Mt. Rainier Shrouded in Smoke
The smoke is a light haze, but it changes the color of everything.
The range of colors in this shot is kind of crazy. We have purples and oranges from the sunset-in-progress; we have the greens of trees, the burnt orange of the field, and the mountain is just beginning to light up from the sunset, with the rock gaining a weird red/brown/purple/blue tone. Crazy.
I shot this with my favorite lens for capturing colors precisely, the Canon 85mm. It was on the Sony α1, and I used a polarizing filter to try to cut through the smokey haze; that worked pretty well. And of course the moon, which was the reason I headed outside in the first place. I knew it would be rising near the mountain, but wasn’t sure where - I got to this site when it was already pretty high (I didn’t do my homework before heading out, need to check all the details ahead next time so I’m not driving at unreasonable speeds through the countryside…).
Here is what the scene looked like to the eye, captured with a 35mm lens:
I also had the Sony 70-200 zoom lens; here is the mountain fully zoomed in. Despite the smoke and haze, the mountain’s details are nice and crisp with a polarizing filter. Th70-200 isn’t quite the same for color as the Canon 85mm; the yellow from the smoke dominates the color palette in this image (especially the clouds). Interesting how different lenses deliver different colors!
I am able to dial out the color shift of the 70-200 lens, but the result looks too perfect, almost artificial. I like the way that the 85mm lens handles the color better.
Nice! All of them are great.
Lovely! Your photos are so beautiful…even with a little smoke in the air! Color is so revealing.