Understanding Light: Patience 2

As the sun slipped behind the mountain, it offered a wonderful silhouette.

While backpacking through the Wind River Range, WY in the early 1990’s, we climbed through Cube Rock Pass to Peak Lake on an overcast, rainy day. Although the scenery was beautiful, the flat light and messy conditions did now allow for much photography. We set up camp above Peak Lake and began dinner preparation late in the day. Just as we were ready to eat, the clouds began to part and reveal our surroundings.

This images shows Peak Lake in cloud cover.

As the clouds opened, revealing the sky and welcomed sun rays, I dropped my meal and grabbed my camera and tripod… set up along the lake, taking a few images as I waited for the right moment. Remember… 1990’s were still the film days. I was using Kodak Ektachrome E100SW.

As the clouds parted I tried different exposure combinations… exposing for the sky, the clouds and the reflection in the lake and the rocks.

The above image was exposing for the sunlight falling on the rocks… but really it was the ‘shapes’ of the rocks against the sky that caught my attention, so I under-exposed to make the rocks a silhouette, giving me the final image at the beginning of this post.

–Kevin Loughlin

Nikon N8008s
Tokina 20-35
Kodak E100SW film
Exposure info not recorded