Had work on Friday and then met up with my brother for his first alpine snow climb on Mount Hood. Naturally he became my main photography subject.
Illumination Rock
Looking back towards White River Canyon.
Ian climbing up the Old Chute.
Ian along the Summit Ridge.
Ian approaching the Summit!
And the following shot is one Ian snapped of me climbing.
Here’s some iPhone shots. Still waiting for the large pano images to upload.
Silcox Hut and the top of the Mile, Timberline Ski Area Mount Hood, Oregon
I went up on Mount Hood last night to test out my skinny skis with the ski crampons and get a night pano from my high point. I didn’t need the ski crampons until above the top Palmer lift house. I went up about 3000 feet above the Timberline parking lot to set up to rig. This trip I did have a new item, I rented a 50mm f/1.2 L from Pro Photo Supply….is that a sweet lens! As indicated in the photos above a below. Having such a wide aperture is needed for solid night photography. The settings for these two shots were 25 seconds, ISO 800 and naturally f/1.2.
Mount Hood…standard view from Silcox Hut.
Once I got up to a spot just below Crater Rock….I thought it would be interesting to capture a pano with Illumination Rock, Portland and the upper mountain. I’m actually glad I didn’t go much higher due to the need to ski back down at night….with all the ice crust wind sculpted terrain it made the ski down a bit slower than I’d like not to mention tiring since by the time I started skiing down I had been awake for almost 24 hrs.
To capture the pano, I dropped the in camera exposure down to 13 seconds and upped the GigaPan to 25 seconds to allow the buffer time to transfer the RAW data. This setting was figured out by on the spot trial and error. Since I’ve never done a night pano with stars before in the cool breeze of the mountain environment. Everything, except my toes functioned perfectly in the cold. The GigaPan battery still had 60% life after taking the 27 minute pano. I apologize if there are any grammatical errors. I only slept two hours after getting home.
Here is the JPG version of the pano:
Mount Hood 55 image panoramic
For the larger version: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/128957
Here’s the new edit:
Last night I went up to Timberline Lodge for the American Alpine Club Oregon Section Dinner. It was a great evening playing with my camera gear and a cool 70-200 mm f/2.8 L. I definitely felt the weight of this lens as the night went along. John Bragg had a great slideshow of his Patagonia experiences. I’ll do a more in depth post in a few days. Until then, here’s some shots that if you’re a fan of my Facebook page you most likely already have seen.
My first ever legitimate bird photo.
I’ll post more from todays excursion to nowhere far….WSU Vancouver.