Sunday, July 29, 2012

Seattle Met Article

The Seattle Met magazine has published a very good overview article on Mt. Rainier NP with an accompanying article on the Whittaker brothers who helped build the REI cooperative and climbing in Mt. Rainier NP.

The article has good overview articles on the NP, some of the animals, local lodging, and photography in the NP among other information. It's a great background article if you're planning a visit this year or looking to plan one in the future. My main gripe is small, but calling it the "Ultimate Guide" is a bit of a stretch.

The article has a shorter article on 5 hints to better photography in the NP. Ok, they're good hints but not what I would say you need to absolultely follow. Why?

Well, the first hint is the obvious advice professional photographers give for the NP, "The Early Bird Gets the Shot ", which means scout the photo location, get up before early, get to the location before or near dawn (about 30 minutes before sunrise), and set up and wait for the shots.

That's very good advice and what is done to capture those breath taking images you see in publications, around sunrise or sunset. What bothers me is that the writer then quotes a photographer who says, "It just becomes a big white mass” when you shoot Mount Rainier midday, says photographer Nathan Hardebeck, who manages a photo gallery Packwood, just off the park’s southeastern corner.

That's not true. Sure the mountain washes out to some degree in the sunlight and the sky turns a bright to pale blue as often does much of the non-snow covered parts of the mountain. But that doesn't take away the many good to great images available even during the hours of the highest sun. It's the time I prefer to photograph for the simple challenge of getting the shot in that light.

Otherwise the photography advice is excellent, some recite on many of the Web pages for my Mt. Rainier NP photo guide After that it's a good article to get your interest to go to the NP and enjoy and photograph it.

Image by Andrew Waits

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