A sea of green surrounding Portland, OR

View of Portland, OR from Mt. Tabor

[/caption] Mt. Tabor offers some of the best views of Downtown Portland along with the West Hills and East Portland. However, since you’re so far away from the city you are advised to bring a pair of binoculars if you want to get any close ups of the city. It’s almost impossible to get the entire city in a single frame using a wide angle lens since 80% of the photo will end up showing mostly sky and foreground due to the distance and the fact that Portland spans a long distance from North to South. I spent two days last Spring hiking Mt. Tabor in order to get some shots of the city but I was frustrated with the lighting since it was either too overcast or the lighting was just plain bad. I hope to come back during the peak Fall season since the majority of the vegetation seen in this photo show that the colors of the leaves changing should be spectacular. I took this photo on 5/24/11 at about 1:35pm and unfortunately the morning was completely clouded over and the evening glare was too much. The sun glare made it hard to get a good focus on the buildings so I ended up discarding the majority of my photos. The distance also made it difficult since that will always play a role in the quality of the image. I was using my Canon 55-250mm lens and had the focal length at 163mm. I attached my CIR-PL and warming filter in order to try and reduce the overexposure due to the sun and warm the tones of the buildings and vegetation. I had the ISO at 100 and the white balance at -0.7. Since the camera was in program/normal mode the aperture was at F-5.7 and the shutter speed at 1/256 seconds. I made sure to use my tripod, bubble level and remote switch to avoid any camera shake. I also ended up using the sharpening tool in Photoshop while trying to sharpen the image of the buildings.

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