f/8 and Be There

As Suby eluded to yesterday, being there is the only major requirement of taking photographs like these. The thing is, it takes a lot of effort to arrive at such a vantage point, especially if you want to get there before the sun comes up. I would say it was well worth the effort, but the only work I put in was getting out of bed. Joshua was the one who had to drive the truck up the mountain (next time I'm wearing a helmet), while Keith drove up the really crazy stuff.

At the time, I felt I was having a great deal of difficulty with composition. It didn't occur to me that the scene itself was magnificent, and all I had to do was point and shoot. For some reason I felt I had a huge responsibility to capture the moment for those who were not on the mountain top with us that day. That's crap. My only concern was to make sure I had enough space on my memory cards and some backup batteries. The rest took care of itself.

Sure, some of the photos are better than others. But come on, there's sky and there's mountains; how many different arrangements of those two shapes could there be? When faced with a simple scene like that, I think the one thing that lingers in my mind is the rule of thirds, and even that can be ignored from time to time. While the basic shapes of the scene don't change much, the colours do. For that reason, I took a heck of a lot of photos.

Canon PowerShot S2 IS, 10mm, f/8, 1/200 sec, ISO 50