Mammoth Hot Creek Sunset

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
At Mammoth Hot Creek the photos of it are predominantly from sunrise since the mountains face the east and can get that sunrise glow and show all that cool mountain detail in higher contrast. But in this case we shot opposite normal wisdom since we had hoped to also get some star shots there later that night (which didn't pan out) but the high clouds put on a nice show for us getting lit up nicely as the sun was going down behind some lower clouds.

This is a 2 shot vertical pano in order to get all of the clouds in the shot along with Hot Creek. I have looked at cropping options since both shots used to create this pano did work pretty well as stand alone shots anyway.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

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Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
This is really nice Jim, but I have found that lots of separation between the horizon and cloud color tend to detract from the more ideal condition when the cloud color was closer to the horizon. I have plenty of them myself.

You still got plenty of detail in the mountains thanks to snow cover.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
This is really nice Jim, but I have found that lots of separation between the horizon and cloud color tend to detract from the more ideal condition when the cloud color was closer to the horizon. I have plenty of them myself.

You still got plenty of detail in the mountains thanks to snow cover.
Thanks Ben, I am glad you like this. And I do agree, ideally the lit up clouds would be lower so I had the same thoughts as you. But then on the other hand, I don't have a lot of photos from here with lit up clouds, so that kind of "clouds" my vision for liking perhaps more then I should. :)
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I do like this scene which would be great to see first hand. I do have to agree with Ben a bit since those clouds are a long way up there from the scene below when viewed in an image.
 

Alisa

Well-Known Member
At Mammoth Hot Creek the photos of it are predominantly from sunrise since the mountains face the east and can get that sunrise glow and show all that cool mountain detail in higher contrast. But in this case we shot opposite normal wisdom since we had hoped to also get some star shots there later that night (which didn't pan out) but the high clouds put on a nice show for us getting lit up nicely as the sun was going down behind some lower clouds.

This is a 2 shot vertical pano in order to get all of the clouds in the shot along with Hot Creek. I have looked at cropping options since both shots used to create this pano did work pretty well as stand alone shots anyway.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

View attachment 8163
I agree with the clouds being too high but I do have to say love the color! :)
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I agree with the clouds being too high but I do have to say love the color! :)
Yep me too! And I think pano’s lend themselves to a scene like this where the clouds are a bit high but are pulled into the scene. I think this will print nice.
 

Ryan10

Founding Member
Nice Jim. I think getting the pink cloud in its entirety is the right choice. The image seems a tad left heavy though.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Nice Jim. I think getting the pink cloud in its entirety is the right choice. The image seems a tad left heavy though.
Thanks Ryan. I think you are right, it does seem slightly heavy on the left. I have found that location can be a bit hard to balance. I do have a few shots from when that cloud structure laid down horizontally across the scene, that might help with the balance some.
 
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