As I mentioned we went to The Mountain last week. (“The Mountain” is Mount Rainier.) Inspired in part by the old black and white photos on the walls of Paradise Inn and in part by the Lens Artists Photo Challenge for this week, I’ve spent some time experimenting with photos from our trip in black and white (a gallery with the color photos is at the end of the post for comparison).
The Mountain is classic, which makes it a great subject for black and white. Every year is both the same and different, depending on the weather and when we can get reservations. This year was on the early side, although the hot weather we had last month sped up snow melt some.
View of The Mountain from Kautz Creek, just inside the Nisqually Entrance.
Myrtle Falls at Paradise.
Tatoosh range from a trail at Paradise.
Clouds and mountains.
Reflection Lakes at Mount Rainier.
Stevens Creek
In this post I have focused on landscapes, on my other blog I posted some black and whites of wildflowers from last week using the same processing methods: Mount Rainier wildflowers in black and white.
How to get the look:
For these photos I used the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, a.k.a., the GIMP to create the black and white images. I used two different tools, both found in the Desaturate submenu of the Colors menu: Desaturate and Color to gray. I put the color to gray image over the desaturated one and experimented with different blend modes. In the cases above I chose the soft light mode. Then I adjusted the opacity of the color to gray layer to get the effect I liked.
The steps were:
Load the image.
Resize the image and sharpen it (resizing usually softens an image).
Fine tune the tone and contrast using either the levels or the tone curve (black and white often looks better if the contrast is greater and the whole range from black to white is used). In the photo of the falls I used layer masks to use different settings for the falls, which were in shadows.
Make two duplicates of the adjusted image.
For the top layer I used the Color to gray filter (Colors>Desaturate>Color to gray). Adjusting the parameters to suit the image.
On the lower layer I used the Desaturate tool (Colors>Desaturate>Desaturate). I tried all of the methods available and chose the one best suited to the photo.
For the Color to gray layer I changed the layer mode and adjusted it’s opacity.
Better than any ride at Disneyland! The lupines along this portion of the trail were amazing.
These are some photos of the upper (higher elevation) portion of the lakes loop trail starting at Paradise. We had a misty but bright morning the day we hiked the loop.
The Golden Gate Trail is the skinny zigzag up the side of the hill.
One of the more breathtaking (and, for me, breathless) loop trails that I hike at Mount Rainier is to go up Golden Gate trail to the skyline trail to Panorama Point.
Skyline Trail is well named.
The lower skyline trail is permanently closed, except for those adept with ice axes. So up one goes even farther.
There is a spot on the Upper Skyline Trail that has much better views than Panorama Point does:
But Panorama Point has a potty (as well as crowds of the many folk who hike directly to and from it starting at the visitor center.
I never go into this hike thinking I will make it, I give myself permission before I start to just go as far as I can and enjoy the beauty that I see, but I always do.
If you ever get a chance to go to Paradise, this is a great loop since many do not go beyond the there and back to Panorama Point, so you have less crowded trails. By hiking up Golden Gate in the morning you get shade for the steepest uphill. When you get above the tree line there is usually a nice breeze for the (not entirely insignificant) remainder of the uphill. There is some scree scramble but not too bad. If it helps you to gauge: I hike in hiking shoes (not boots), carry a mono-pod/hiking stick and don’t have exceptionally good balance. I am a bit nervous, but have never had a problem.
My Dad and I took a trip down memory pier, along the rapidly changing waterfront of Seattle today. It was an exceptionally blue day…weather wise anyway. We were pretty cheerful.
A blue view of the Tatoosh range in the Cascade Mountains of Western Washington State with Mount Adams peeking over their shoulder. Photo was taken at Paradise on Mount Rainier a few years ago.
XingfuMama 