Photographing the Grand Teton National Park

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Jackson Lake Smoke Grand Teton National Park

After our all to short visit to Yellowstone Susan and I headed south to Jackson Hole and the Tetons. It was years ago that we had driven by these mountains on our way across country, and we were excited to finally have a few days to explore. We stayed in a great bed and breakfast in Jackson, but, sadly, we discovered that the dramatic mountains were largely obscured by the smoke from several forest fires in Idaho. We still had a wonderful time hiking the mountains and exploring the trendy town of Jackson, but photographically, the experience centered on trying to find ways of getting past the murk to capture memorable images of this iconic location.

So what can you do when smoke or haze obscures your beautiful landscape?

Patience
First you can wait and hope for a storm to pass through blowing away the grime. Unfortunately this didn't happen for us. I shrugged and promised to come back again, sometime, and then I had to make do. 


Get Close

Inspiration Point Trail

The impact of smoke and haze is magnified by distance. Some of the Tetons’ classic viewpoints, such as the Mormon Row of deserted farms, are several miles east of the mountains. On clear days, the classic barns and fences make wonderful foreground material against the rugged mountains, but through the smoke, the peaks were just a faint pastel backdrop. I quickly learned to seek out viewpoints closer to the peaks. The smoke still had its impact, but especially when hiking among the mountains, the effect was much reduced. And, of course, close encounters with the wildlife were always clear.

Mule Deer Fawn

Bull Moose

 









Celebrate the Foreground

Mormon Row Foreground

When the distant vistas are murky, it is a good time to focus on the foreground. I always look for good foregrounds to compliment my expansive landscapes, but in this situation, the sharp, clear foreground elements helped to offset the lack of distant majesty. Fortunately the Tetons are full of great detail; rocks, flowers, animals and old structures can all become nice foci of interest.  
 







Embrace the Smoke

Mormon Row Sunset

On our first night in the Tetons I decided to check out Mormon Row. This is traditionally a morning site with the warm sunrise illuminating both the barns and the distant mountains. Although I knew that the peaks would be obscured, I hoped to use the smoke to augment the sunset light. I was excited to see that by shooting through the murk the

Smoke Filtered Sunrise

waning sun was given added dimension. As it dropped behind the mountains, the rays of light became vividly palpable and with the mountains in silhouette the images became much more about the light and the foreground with the smoke just a necessary piece of the puzzle. The next morning from the same spot, the smoke still shrouded the mountains, but when I turned to face the sun, it was so heavily filtered that I was able to shoot the rising disc without blowing out the surroundings.

 



Back in the Digital Darkroom

Jackson Lake
Sharp Mask Enhanced Contrast

Of course post-processing can always help. With a careful selection, the mountains can be isolated for enhanced contrast and vibrancy. The Unsharp Mask tool can also be used to enhance contrast. In the Unsharp Mask menu (Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask), I raise the radius setting to around fifty and then adjust the strength to achieve the desired level of contrast enhancement. This technique can work wonders on flat images regardless of the cause, including smoke and haze. It is a powerful tool that can be easily overdone, but in this case, I used a mask to limit the effect to the distant mountains and then fine tuned the impact by adjusting the layer's opacity slider.

HDR

HDR to the Rescue
HDR techniques can also be helpful. The image of the mountains behind the north end of Jenny Lake combines most of the techniques I have discussed. It was taken closer to the peaks and had strong foreground elements, but additionally I found that with HDR I could do a better job cutting through the smoke. I captured 7 bracketed images, and then used Photoshop’s HDR Pro just focusing on enhancing the contrast in the mountains.




 



Black & White Conversion
Smoke and haze unavoidably mutes the vibrancy of color in images and, in these situations, conversion to black and white can restore the photograph's impact.  Black and white images can be more aggressively edited without affecting color quality.  Finally contrast enhancement or HDR can be combined with black and white conversion and local adjustments to further restore the snap in those murky distant peaks.


 

Black & White Conversion, Schwabacher Road

Hidden Falls

The Grand Teton National Park is an amazing place and although I was terribly disappointed by the smoke, I enjoyed the challenge and, in the end I came away with images that have a different quality than those that are the typical postcard shots. Every now and then it is good to be forced adjust to challenging conditions, and vacation is the perfect time for fresh experiences.

Enough lame rationalizations. The next episode will feature Hood River and the Columbia River Gorge, highlighting spectacular waterfalls, majestic Mount Hood and of course a wedding. And all with much less smoke!

Freezing the Foliage : ISO Stacking

Getting ISO Right in the Digital Camera II

I know that I’m in trouble when I insist at the beginning of a blog that “This will be a short one”. It usually means that it will go on for pages, but this time, I am committed. I have a talk to prepare for the Worcester Camera Club and I have much more to do. I could always dust off one of my old talks, but my plan has been to do a new presentation covering a lot of the “Getting It Right in the Digital Camera” articles that I have been publishing of late. So, HONESTLY, this will be a brief extension of my recent “ISO Control” article. 

ISO 100 Moving Foliage

Two week ago I discussed the use of the expanded ISO range in many of our newer digital cameras and the benefits of being able to control ISO with the turn of a dial. The capability to adjust ISO as shooting situations change has provided an important new control over exposure. I have talked previously about the benefits of bracketing photos including both exposure and focus. ISO can also be bracketed in some challenging situations.

 ISO Stacking

In my landscape photography, I am often faced with trying to get broad depth of field in situations where the wind is moving the foliage.When I stop down to expand the depth of field the resulting long exposure usually leaves the foliage a blurry mess, especially in the foreground.

ISO 100, 1.3 Seconds
Detail



ISO 1600. 1/8 Seconds
Detail

One approach, which I have discussed before, is to focus bracket or stack, using

Stacked Image with Foliage Motion
"Painted out"

multiple images with a wider aperture to allow faster shutter speeds, but sometimes this isn’t enough to freeze the gyrating greenery and the shallow depth of field of each image may not fully overlap leaving gaps of soft focus. Another strategy is to capture an image with the aperture and shutter adjusted to freeze the motion with acceptable depth of field and then adjust the ISO to balance the exposure. This may only be required in the foreground image(s) where the motion is most noticeable. Greater noise reduction may be required for these slices, but they can then be stacked with the images taken at lower ISO to construct a complete picture with full DOF and sharp leaves, horses or whatever else was moving.  

 

 

Example:

For my example I am using the same image that illustrated my first ISO Control article.  The picture taken at ISO 100 and 1.3 seconds had the best image quality, but with blurred foliage, both on the foreground tree and in the background.  ISO 1600 gave me a shutter speed of 1/8 second which was sufficiently fast to freeze the movement and had good DOF at f20.   I simply stacked the ISO 1600 above the ISO 100, aligned the two with Auto-Align and then painted a mask to reveal the sharp foliage over the areas of blur.  With the use of noise reduction and the application of the high ISO image only where needed the final picture retained high image quality.

That’s IT. I told you this would be short. In this case the "best image from the camera" was actually two images at different ISOs.  Give it a try and let me know how it comes out.

OK, I can’t resist. Just one more point while we are talking about moving foliage. Another technique I use occasionally to freeze motion is based on the fact moving foliage does not all move at the same time. If you take a number of images at the same focal length you can often combine parts of each to isolate times when each region is relatively still. This is inevitably a tedious process of selective masking, but the results can be quite effective.

That’s it, I promise. Now off to Powerpoint.