About the Image(s)

The High Sierra

The top of the world in the contiguous United States is located in the mountains of the central Sierra Nevada surrounding Mt. Whitney, a 14,505 pillar of granite jutting straight up into the atmosphere. The trail to the summit is only for the hardy. But there are plenty of good vantage points to capture the essence of these mountains with your camera.

I took this shot a few years ago with my Canon 7D and a Canon 17-40 mm lens at 40mm. Yes, I used a polarizer. (I almost always do.) ISO 100; f/10 at 1/160 sec. Profile: camera matching landscape. White balance: daylight preset (5,500 temp), tint +17, vibrance +17, saturation +3. White point set to +37, black point -47. Added about a half stop of exposure and bumped up the contrast +23.

I made additional adjustments to accentuate the sheer, raw feeling of this place. A dull representational shot just wasn’t going to cut it. I started by adding a lot more texture (+77) and clarity (+67). I also added a tad to the dehaze slider (+5). I wanted more definition, so in curves I added a bit to the highlights and lights and diminished the darks and shadows. In the color mixer, I brought down the blues (-67) to make the sky darker. The foothills in the foreground needed some tweaking to balance the colors so I added 57 to the orange slider and 23 to the yellow slider. I cropped some of the sky out in a 16X9 format. (If I were making a print, I would crop out more of the sky.) Then in a separate layer I toned the whole thing down by dropping the luminance saturation by 17 points. This gave me the feel I was looking for??”a more subtle yet distinct color contrast. I also sharpened the final image a bit.

These mountains should be on everyone's bucket list. The eastern escarpment of the Sierra lies in singular, stark contrast to the landscape both east and west. These mountains provide habitat for wildlife, fresh water for a thirsty California and some of the most breathtaking scenery anywhere in the country.