I put some time aside this week to edit my sunset shot from Mount Assiniboine in British Columbia. This was a return trip to Assiniboine to get a better sky at a better time of day then I did the first trip. I really, really wanted this shot to be successful. When I plan my entire trip around the success of one image, things get stressful in a hurry.
Some of my fellow photographers will understand the procrastination that comes with processing a photograph that was very technical in the field. You know it’s gonna hurt!! My biggest concern was that my technique in the field might have failed me and I didn’t want to find out. So I slowly inched my way closer and closer to this image all week.
The evening I photographed this scene, I was faced with 30 kph winds and cold temps. The sky looked super promising and turned out to be terrific. Hanging out on my perch was pretty taxing. I had hiked to the Nublet with a friend who gave me his big puffy down coat to wear over my own. At that point I was toasty, but still concerned about my best strategy for controlling movement in my images and their quality using higher ISO’s and faster shutter speeds. I waited for lulls in the wind and shot for the mid-ground using faster shutter speeds. I used long shutter speeds for the sky to get soft clouds. In fact, in this image I used a 4 stop solid ND on the sky for an 8 second exposure. I blended the two in Photoshop.
Waiting for lulls and using faster shutter speeds paid off and I managed to find images without movement, blur or camera vibration all risks you run into shooting in high winds.
It was good to get down off that mountain. I was concerned that Noel and I would run into grizzly bears. I felt sorry for the photographers we left behind that planned on staying up there in that ferocious wind to shoot stars and then sunrise. I’m sure it was a very, very long cold and scary night.
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