My Favorite Landscape From This Summer

Soft Light SunsetFinal Light

The top image is my favorite landscape photo from this summer.  I just wish I had thought to take multiple exposures so I could have stitched them together in a true panorama.  Then, I could print it huge.  But, I didn’t.  I just cropped a single frame to the panoramic aspect ratio you see above.  I can still print it pretty big, but not huge.

The other two images are shots that I took as I started my drive back down to my campsite.  They were the last images I took on my first trip to Glacier.

Manipulating Sunsets

Sunset in Glacier National Park Sunset in Glacier National Park

Here are two pictures of sunset taken in Glacier National Park.  They were taken less than two minutes apart with the same camera, lens, and camera settings: 1/90sec,F22 at ISO400.  They were shot in RAW.  I just warmed up the color temperature significantly (to about 19000°K) in the first one to bring out the orange and cooled down the temperature in the second (to about 3900°K) to bring out the blues.  I did this in Lightroom during post processing.  Initially, both images looked pretty much the same other than the slight differences in composition.  The second image is a lot closer to what it actually looked like to my eyes, but the first is closer to what we tend to imagine when we picture a summer sunset.  I guess this shows that photographs don’t always accurately depict the world as we see it…but, you already knew that.