After our last trip to Glacier National Park in Montana, my family and I spent a couple of days at Whitefish Mountain Resort west of Glacier, on the southern flank of Big Mountain.
A full moon was rising after sunset, so I hiked a farther up the mountain with camera and tripod in hand, and captured some nice twilight images of the moon rising over the Swan Valley in the southeast.
As the twilight faded away, the moon rose higher behind some spruce trees. From my vantage point, I could see Whitefish Lake and the town of Whitefish at the base of the mountain, and Kalispell and the Cabinet Mountains in the distance to the south. I was able to capture some really nice photos, which I liked better than the ones I had taken earlier.
 |
| Moonrise over Whitefish Lake and the Flathead Valley, Montana |
To see this image in a larger size, click here.
Another hour passed before I finished up and hiked back down to the resort village in the moonlight. By that time, the rest of my family was sound asleep.
Upon returning home from our trip, I examined the raw image files on my computer monitor. Due to the fact that I was using a vintage 2005 digital camera, the image contained lots of noise in the dark areas—which was a pain, because the picture contained mostly dark areas. I applied enough noise reduction in Photoshop to make for a smooth sky, but that wiped out most of the detail in the foreground.
Fortunately, I had taken shots from the same location in the morning, when the lighting angle on the foreground trees was similar. With some careful copying, pasting, and clone stamping, I was able to restore the foreground detail in the night photo. It was a time consuming and tedious task, but I'm unlikely to get a second opportunity to capture the same image in the same place with my current camera outfit...so I consider it time well spent. I hope you agree.
— Gerald Blank
No comments:
Post a Comment