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Sierra Nevada and Yosemite from Mt. Hamilton, California, USA


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Bill De Jager

Today (17 January) I went on a little photo expedition to Mines Road and Mt. Hamilton, Alameda and Santa Clara counties, California, USA., in response to a nice snowfall in the area yesterday.

 

MATERIALS AND METHODS

 

This time I made three errors to start:

 

1. Forgetting to set the alarm, resulting in a very late start and very mediocre light. This has not usually been a problem in the past, and just a year ago my wife and I had a wonderful excursion into a snowy wonderland in the same area, thanks to a really early start that gave us magical lighting of the snow.

2. Not taking the half-ball adapter for my new tripod (left on top of some other gear after I pulled it out of its drawer), so I couldn't attach the ballhead. The ballhead was supposed to seat without the adapter, but since I didn't check that before leaving of course it didn't work.

3. Not thinking to take along the hood/loupe combo for the back screen, so glare from the snow made it very hard to see. I shoot in snow seldom enough that I forget some of the basic issues.

 

While I had an enjoyable trip, I ended up taking almost no photos and none using the tripod the way it was intended. I did rest the tripod foot of the Nikon 70-200 FL on top of the tripod to stabilize it while VR was engaged. However, trying to use live view focus was almost impossible due to minimal contrast on the screen. Still, I managed to get one decent photo looking from Mt. Hamilton, where the photo was taken, across the inner South Coast Ranges and the San Joaquin Valley all the way to the Sierra Nevada.

 

The camera was a Nikon D7200 IR converted by LifePixel with their deep IR filter. I desaturated the output due to minimal color information. The waveband choice did a good job of cutting through considerable haze. In post-processing I took severe measures to maximize contrast which was very poor, due in part to poor lighting. I intend to return much earlier in the day when this side of the range will have many more shadows to accentuate the terrain.

 

WHAT THE PHOTO SHOWS

 

The lower 40% of this cropped photo includes some of the innermost ridges of the Diablo Range, a subset of the inner South Coast Ranges, extending up to ~900 meters elevation in the photo. Vegetation is mostly solid brush (local plant community called chaparral) with scattered trees. The most common tall tree in the photo is gray pine, Pinus sabiniana, a highly drought-adapted species with light-colored foliage even in visible light. Climate in the vicinity is semi-arid with very hot, dry summers and cool winters with occasional light rainfall, quite different from the temperate rain forests only only 32 km/20 miles away but much closer to the ocean. Snow was nearly melted off in this area by the time the photo was taken.

 

Behind these low mountains is the San Joaquin Valley, pretty much out of view. That valley is around 65 km (40 miles) in width in this area.

 

Beyond the valley (occupying the middle 20% of the vertical extent of the photo) is the Sierra Nevada. This is a massive fault-block range that (by a very small margin) includes the highest peak in the 48 contiguous states, though not located in this photo. This range can get tremendous snowfalls, with the record being 2,245 cm (884 inches) in one winter. This snowfall supports extensive forests, with the higher elevations getting 80% or so of their annual precipitation from snow due to the dry summers which minimize rainfall.

 

Nearly all of the upper half of the visible Sierra Nevada in this photo is located within Yosemite National Park. The prominent dark-faced peak near the center of the photo is the famous Half Dome of Yosemite National Park. The highest peak in the center-right portion is Mt. Lyell, the highest peak in the park. It's located about 240 km/150 miles away.

 

49401735633_2793e0a49a_b.jpg

Yosemite from Hamilton 2020 Jan 17 less crop by Bill de Jager, on Flickr

 

Photographic information:

 

Nikon 70-200E FL

200mm

1/1250 at f/5.6

ISO 800

 

Elevations:

 

Photo taken (below summit of Mt. Hamilton): 1,241 meters/4,073 feet

Half Dome, near center of photo: 2,696 meters/8,844 feet

Mt. Lyell (skyline on center right): 3,999 meters/13,114 feet

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Bill De Jager
The scene looks flat due to great distance and very flat lighting. It looked way worse in visible light.
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The scene looks flat due to great distance and very flat lighting. It looked way worse in visible light.

You could push the contrast even more, with the curve tool, and remove the vignette, Bill?

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Bill De Jager

You could push the contrast even more, with the curve tool, and remove the vignette, Bill?

 

I'm using Photoshop Elements. As far as I can tell curves is not available with this program. I already maxed out contrast, highlights (upward), and shadows (downward) to get the maximum spread for the histogram. I did go back to the raw file and use the auto contrast tool on top of existing adjustments and think that helped a bit.

 

49406995561_1b415b4a7a_b.jpg

Yosemite from Hamilton 2020 Jan 17 v3 by Bill de Jager, on Flickr

 

I'm not planning on getting the full Photoshop program until after we move and after my main computer is rebuilt.

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Yes, that brings out the foreground nicely. Photoshop can also remove the vignette either by using the dodge tool with a very large radius (like 900 pixels) or by using the Lens Correction filter. For this the dodge method is probably going to give better results because the vignette looks kind of uneven due to being a crop.
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Bill De Jager

Thanks for the help, Andy.

 

I went back to the original to remove vignette. It still looks like a little vignette might remain, but any further adjustment creates noticeable lightening in the extreme corners. I wonder if the lens is creating a subtle hot spot? The aperture setting was f/5.6 on an f/2.8 lens, so you wouldn't even expect vignetting in this photo. I also used the haze removal tool this time. I just recently resumed using this program after a long hiatus so I'm rediscovering stuff I used to know!

 

Here is the uncropped version:

 

49409794358_c57b8ff7ef_b.jpg

Yosemite from Hamilton_2020_Jan_17_v5_uncropped

by Bill de Jager, on Flickr

 

The vertical composition isn't very good. Since I didn't have a usable tripod head at the time (as explained in my original post), I was just laying the tripod foot on top of the tripod to be as steady as possible, without too much concern over vertical composition. I was trying to salvage a bad situation that I had created through my earlier error.

 

And here is a slightly revised crop:

 

49409793353_0bd87161b3_b.jpg

Yosemite from Hamilton_2020_Jan_17_v5_cropped

by Bill de Jager, on Flickr

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