For years, Thom has been encouraging me to use manual mode on my camera. I’ve resisted because I’ve felt like my photos end up terribly over- or under-exposed, grainy, or otherwise messed up in some way. But I’ve gritted my teeth and practiced it, and yesterday I think I finally hit a point where I feel good about fully-manual photography.
Yesterday’s canvas was, not surprisingly, Glacier National Park. We went up there for the day with Kyra and Hannah. When we arrived in the late morning, the sky was overcast and everything was colored in a muted grey. Like pretty much every other time I’ve been to Glacier in the last year! We started at St Mary Lake on the far east side of the park, and I caught some “moody” shots.
I was kind of complaining about the grey weather to Kyra, and she told me I needed to have a better attitude. As if on cue, the clouds started to clear and the sky turned blue. The picture below was taken precisely 11 minutes after the one above. Notice the incredible difference in the color of the water (and pretty much everything else):
So that made me happy. The rest of the day was a brilliant sunny one, which was great for photos but kind of warm for hiking. We spent a while enjoying the cool glacial water of St Mary Lake.
It’s a truly beautiful lake– one of the most-photographed spots in the world.
Ooh, here’s a slightly more artistic angle:
And here’s my beautiful bride:
Hannah had a fierce blister from the hike up Mt Aeneas last week, so we couldn’t do the five-mile jaunt up to Avalanche Lake as we’d hoped. Instead, we took a few shorter trails, including one to Baring Falls. With a tripod and a couple of neutral-density filters, I succeeded in taking a sweet waterfall shot.
Of course the girls had to pose around pretty much every bend in the trail.
As we cruised along Going-to-the-Sun Road, naturally I stopped the car frequently to grab some shots of the amazing views of the valley.
It’s hard to capture the immensity of this place with a camera.
But, with some nice pictures on full-manual mode, my confidence is up and I plan to continue working on technique. It’s a good thing I have such an impressive canvas!