Adirondacks Adventure Part 5 (Ian Plant)

This is an image taken from the summit of Round Mountain in the High Peaks Wilderness. Round is one of the smaller Adirondack peaks—with an elevation of only around 3500′—but it has a commanding view of many of its grander cousins. Round is unique because it has pink granite on the summit. There’s plenty of granite in the Adirondacks, but finding pink granite was a real treat. After a stormy two days spent in the backcountry (not a single decent shot taken the whole time), I was hoping for some clearing in the weather while on top of Round. I was not disappointed! The storm began to break at sunset, and clouds in the sky lit up red, yellow, and pink. Unfortunately, only discreet portions of the sky had color—I’m always looking for times when the whole sky is fired by the setting sun (then again, who isn’t?). No worries, as long as there is color in the sky, one can get colorful images, if compositions are choosen carefully. Also, I used a little trick—I put several neutral density filters on my lens so that I could get a 30-second exposure. During the long exposure, the fast moving clouds would streak across the image frame. I choose compositions that would allow clouds with color to streak across the frame, and thus I ended up with more color in my images than if I had choosen a static approach. Also, the moving clouds impart a sense of motion and power to the image, and the resulting streaks form a shape that repeats the shape formed by the cracks in the granite. Note that granite is actually fairly reflective and it takes on the colors around it; Round’s granite had a subtle native pink shade that was greatly enhanced in this image because it was reflecting the red light in the sky. At other times that evening, the granite seemed to change color as the clouds above it changed color. I stayed on the wind-blown summit until dark (it was not just windy but cold up there—the temperature dropped from the low 80s to the high 30s that evening—mountain weather at its finest!), and then hiked 2.5 miles down to the trailhead by headlamp. Adirondack mountains are very steep, rocky, and wet, making hiking in the dark a challenge, but it is well worth the risk.

Stay tuned . . . image 6 out of 7 will be posted tomorrow!

 

~ by mountaintrailphoto on August 26, 2008.