After completing a nature photography session at Federation Forest State Park (see my blog post at Highlights of the Forest, Federation Forest State Park, Washington, 2016), I arrived in the early afternoon to a nearly full parking lot at the Sunrise Visitors Center at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. It was obvious that the Summer travel season was in full swing.
After a quick walk through the visitors center (it was one of the rare occasions that it was open when I was visiting), I set off to scout out locations to photograph Mount Rainier. The path I chose led me to Emmons Glacier Vista, which looks straight down into the White River valley, then on to Emmons Glacier and the grand Mountain itself.
Unlike at Paradise, where you are actually on Mount Rainier, Sunrise is located a bit further away high upon a ridge.
Once I had captured a series of photographs at the first vista point, I continued my walk down the Silver Forest Trail. Since the weather is so unpredictable at Mount Rainier, and it appeared that clouds were moving in, I decided to shoot a few landscape photographs while I was out, even though it wasn’t the greatest of light.
I captured a series of landscape photographs along the trail before heading back to my Landcruiser for a nap. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and this night was the Perseid Meteor Shower, so I needed to get as much sleep as possible.
After waking up from my nap, I repositioned my Landcruiser near the edge of the parking lot facing Mount Rainier. By this time, the “magic hour” had arrived and I set out for a few more landscape photographs before nightfall. There is a reason why this area is called Sunrise. In the evening, Mount Rainier is backlit and not the greatest light to photograph the mountain. However, at Dawn, it’s one of the most beautiful places you’ll experience.
For the rest of the evening, my plan was to attempt photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower and the Milky Way. That story is in a future blog post.
Since most of the photographs I captured around the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park were shot during the afternoon sun and not under ideal lighting conditions for landscape photography, I processed these photographs as a series of black-and-white images.
For my photographic style, unless it’s early or late in the day or where color is an important element in the composition, I’m always seriously considering whether the scene would best be rendered as a black and white photograph. If you can’t tell from my body of work, I have a passion for black and white photography.
