October 17, 2008
Another mountain shot from Banff-
A little bit of a funny story with this pic...I was traveling very light on this trip...one camera, one lens...no tripod, no shutter release, no beanbag...I really wasn't expecting to take any night shots, but when I saw this, I couldn't resist.
This was taken just off a small dead end access road (almost no traffic) with a few parking spots to pull off and admire the scenery. Unfortunately, none offer a view in this direction, so I had to basically just park on the side of the road. And, not having a tripod or beanbag, I had to find something to prop the camera on...I'm not even going to go over the list of items that I tried, but I finally settled on a spare shoe from my suitcase---It actually held the camera pretty well... To make matters worse, I couldn't find anywhere to put the camera that would give me a view close to this... I ended up having to back the car up a little and put the camera (in its shoe) on the roof of the car---again, it actually worked pretty well. It was a tad embarrassing, but only two cars drove by...
Unfortunately, the shoe isn't sturdy enough to hold the camera while I press the shutter release, so I have to resort to the 10 second timer. That really drug things out....and it wasn't exactly what you'd call warm.
I don't think I'll travel quite as light next time...
Not a lot of post on this shot--it's an HDR merge of two shots, trying to bring the moon back in a little, but it didn't really work...cropped a bit off the bottom, and a high pass filter blended to bring out some detail in the mountains. The exposure is pretty close to how it came out of the camera.
