Quick trip to Rainier

coscorrosa

I left for Mt. Rainier last (Friday) night around 10PM and got there around 12:30 AM. I shot the stars (couldn't really do much with Rainier in the foreground because of the moon setting right behind it), then Reflection Lake at sunrise (light was awful, so I'm not including any of those), then did a quick trip down to Narada Falls, and then the Comet Falls/Van Trump Park trail (about 6 miles round trip), got home around 3PM, and promptly slept after being up for over 30 hours straight (for the second time in the last 5 days).

The weather was pretty clear/sunny, the worst possible light for waterfalls if they're not in shade, but Comet Falls is amazing, and worth viewing even if the light is crap. I hadn't been to the southern park of the park in almost a month too, so I was getting itchy.

Here are some of my favorites from the trip (ordered by date).

#1: In retrospect, this would have been better with more stars and less (or no) reflection.



#2: Milky Way



#3: Narada Falls



#4: Narada Falls



#5: Bloucher Falls



#6: Van Trump Creek (just downstream from Comet Falls)



#7: Upper Comet Falls (past Van Trump Park on the way to Mildred Point). I walked on a huge snowfield that covered Van Trump Creek in order to get to this point.



#8: You can see Upper Comet Falls if you look carefully at the end of the snowfield.



#9: Comet Falls

scole

Light pollution or not, I really like #1. It's probably because of the reflection in the lake. Love #2, too.

Haven't visited the various falls myself but the Narada shot is very soothing. Also love #5 because of the spray and the lightbeam that's being cut off due to whatever ridgeline. Cool shot!

See? I knew I had to sneak my posts in before the rest of you did!

Robbug

o.O

OMG - #1 is absolutely amazing. #2 closely follows. The night shots are dear to me and I am so jealous as I can't get away from my other obligations to get there. All of them are great!

Ok now for the nitpicking because as far as I am concerned you need to get these to print! #1: there is some chroma noise in the reflection of the brightest area. I am thinking if you ran a selective noise reduction on the reflection only you would lose no detail in the actual sky.

#2 - AWESOME! grabbing the gaseous clouds in the arms of the milky way is great. Now if you could bump up on saturation you may get some of the color too. Still as is, it is damn near perfect!

#3 - I wish i had that in my portfolio. Could you get a slower shutter speed? More silkiness would have been perfect for me but that is just my humble opinion.

#4 - yes!

#5 - #8 great shots as I would expect from you.

#9 - great drop to the rainbow

Thank you for sharing. You guys are giving me plenty of ammo in my argument to the wife to get a away for a bit

Up to this point I have been "idle" with obligations for events and now that summer is here I am way too busy and your captures just make me jealous

Rob

squirl033

great stuff as usual, Ron... what were your settings for #2? you captured the milky way so perfectly, it's simply amazing. also really like # 4 - the contrast between the soft, misty water, which comprises the majority of the image, and the sharply focused rocks is quite striking.

dlplumer

My Favorites

1. Beyond outstanding; are the stars being reflected for real?

2. Fabulous

6. I love it.

boblu262

WOW ... I'm always impressed with your work and this set is no exception. I love the waterfall set and the star shots are breathtaking!

thapamd

Beautiful stuff, Ron! All you hiking and late night heroics paid off! That 1st shot is brilliant and the waterfalls are astounding!

coscorrosa

scole wrote:

Light pollution or not, I really like #1. It's probably because of the reflection in the lake. Love #2, too.

Haven't visited the various falls myself but the Narada shot is very soothing. Also love #5 because of the spray and the lightbeam that's being cut off due to whatever ridgeline. Cool shot!

See? I knew I had to sneak my posts in before the rest of you did!

Thanks - this is only about 1/15th of the Rainier shots I have planned for the next month, so you better hurry to catch up

If you're in the park and it's overcast (which it often is - just not lately!), I definitely recommend seeing Comet Falls in person. Good time for wildflower macros/closeups too.

coscorrosa

Robbug wrote:

o.O

OMG - #1 is absolutely amazing. #2 closely follows. The night shots are dear to me and I am so jealous as I can't get away from my other obligations to get there. All of them are great!

Ok now for the nitpicking because as far as I am concerned you need to get these to print! #1: there is some chroma noise in the reflection of the brightest area. I am thinking if you ran a selective noise reduction on the reflection only you would lose no detail in the actual sky.

#2 - AWESOME! grabbing the gaseous clouds in the arms of the milky way is great. Now if you could bump up on saturation you may get some of the color too. Still as is, it is damn near perfect!

#3 - I wish i had that in my portfolio. Could you get a slower shutter speed? More silkiness would have been perfect for me but that is just my humble opinion.

#4 - yes!

#5 - #8 great shots as I would expect from you.

#9 - great drop to the rainbow

Thank you for sharing. You guys are giving me plenty of ammo in my argument to the wife to get a away for a bit

Up to this point I have been "idle" with obligations for events and now that summer is here I am way too busy and your captures just make me jealous

Rob

Thanks Rob for the detailed feedback. I'll try to reduce the noise a bit in the first shot and increase the saturation in the second (for some reason I never think about increasing the saturation in any of my shots when I often should).

Hopefully you'll get a chance or two to make it to Rainier, as you know the stars are amazing there on a clear night.

coscorrosa

squirl033 wrote:

great stuff as usual, Ron... what were your settings for #2? you captured the milky way so perfectly, it's simply amazing. also really like # 4 - the contrast between the soft, misty water, which comprises the majority of the image, and the sharply focused rocks is quite striking.

The milky way shot was at f/2.8, ISO 3200, 20 seconds at 16mm. I stacked a few exposures and blended them to reduce noise.

coscorrosa

dlplumer wrote:

My Favorites

1. Beyond outstanding; are the stars being reflected for real?

2. Fabulous

6. I love it.

Thanks Dan - mark your calendar for next year

Yes the stars in the reflection of #1 are real, I'm not good enough at photoshop to add them in! If I was, I would have added detail in the mountain reflection and also reduced the noise there

coscorrosa

boblu262 wrote:

WOW ... I'm always impressed with your work and this set is no exception. I love the waterfall set and the star shots are breathtaking!

Thanks Bob! Rainier is an amazing place. When I was there I didn't think I was going to come away with much since the light wasn't very good, but it was still a good trip.

coscorrosa

thapamd wrote:

Beautiful stuff, Ron! All you hiking and late night heroics paid off! That 1st shot is brilliant and the waterfalls are astounding!

Thanks Mahesh, your post is making me regret not staying up another 10 hours and hitting Spray Park at sunset!

Awais Yaqub

Wonderful series !

Allan FG

Great shots

grimace

Nice looking series Ron!!

wfeller

#5 is super!

-

Doug Solis

#1 agree with you more stars would be an amazing shot, as it stands it is damn good. #2 I love the milky way shots, it is something you just don't see often enough. #4 Really lovely shot of the milky white falls kind of shrouding the rocks below.

Nice job as usual.

coscorrosa

Doug Solis wrote:

#1 agree with you more stars would be an amazing shot, as it stands it is damn good. #2 I love the milky way shots, it is something you just don't see often enough. #4 Really lovely shot of the milky white falls kind of shrouding the rocks below.

Nice job as usual.

Thanks! I think with better noise performance, the ISO 3200+ shots required to get static photos will become more and more prevalent. I never thought I'd use ISO 3200 on my camera for a landscape photo, and I didn't think I'd ever use my 16-35 at f/2.8 either for a landscape either, but both came in handy for that shot.

coscorrosa

Thanks again to everyone who commented and provided feedback. Rainier is one of my favorite places on earth, someday I hope to do it justice on camera.

dseidman

You sure used the moon to your advantage in the first shot. The clouds add a lot of interest and make the photo pretty unique.

The second looks great with the silhouetted foreground trees but as you already know, those star trails off to the sides are a bit of a problem.

When it comes to the waterfall shots, my preference is #3 and #4.

Despite the harsh daylight, it looks like you came away with some really nice shots from this quick trip to the mountain.

coscorrosa

dseidman wrote:

You sure used the moon to your advantage in the first shot. The clouds add a lot of interest and make the photo pretty unique.

The second looks great with the silhouetted foreground trees but as you already know, those star trails off to the sides are a bit of a problem.

When it comes to the waterfall shots, my preference is #3 and #4.

Despite the harsh daylight, it looks like you came away with some really nice shots from this quick trip to the mountain.

Thanks, I have an idea on how to fix those star trails

Even though I said "quick" trip it was really about 14 hours from when I left to when I came back. There were a bunch of people heading into the park when I left, and the Comet Falls trailhead parking lot was completely full. Weekends at the park are not great during the middle of a weekend (fortunately there's hardly anyone around at sunset or sunrise though).