Washington Mountains

Washington State Cascades

[/caption] One a sunny day you are able to see as far north as Mt. Rainier and as far south as The Three Sisters. There is a secret vantage point where you can get one of the most spectacular views of the Washington and Oregon Cascade mountains. You can read about this place on my article that I wrote on 6/14/10. Late Spring is my favorite times to hike along the foothills of the Cascades since the mountains still have an abundant of snow as well as in parts of the lower elevations. The creeks, alpine lakes and smaller rivers are also swelled to the brim with runoff. You can also still witness many of the spring wildflowers basking in the warm sun. The air is also more pure and less polluted. The views seem to be never ending during the months of May and June. I took this shot on 6/12/10 and I was using my Canon EOS T1i along with my Canon 18-55mm kit lens. I attached my warming filter as well as my CIR-PL. I also used my tripod, bubble level and remote switch in order to avoid any camera shake since it was a bit windy and my footing was a bit sketchy. The sun was a bit low since it was about 5:30pm and the sun was directly behind me. You can clearly see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams in the distance. The field of view is large as well as the depth of field which makes this shot especially appealing since there isn’t any blur in the foreground or background. I set the focal length to 35mm in order to include each of the mountains without reducing the focal length anymore than I needed to. I would have tilted the camera lower in order to include less of the sky but the forest trees were so low that it would have caused the depth of view to be too soft. The camera mode was in Program/Normal so the aperture was set at F-6.3 and the exposure speed at 1/80 second. I set the ISO to 100 and the white balance at -1 in order to keep the shot as sharp as possible.

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