Note: Click any of these images to see it large.

I was in Montana last week for my ‘everyday’ job, and happened to be near Glacier National Park.  I was lucky enough to be able to get into the park on a couple mornings and all I can say is: Wow! What a fantastic place to take a camera! Landscapes are what first drew me to photography, but lately I haven’t really been doing too much of these, so it was good to get back to it.  Since this wasn’t a dedicated photography trip, I was traveling light and took Jenn’s 40D with me instead of the 5D.  I was hoping to get into the park and knew that if I did I’d need the 10-22mm wide angle lens. (Sadly, I don’t yet have a wide angle lens for the full-frame 5D, but I’m hoping to get one soon… I’m holding out until we can afford the 16-35mm L lens – that thing is sweet!)

This waterfall is just on the west side of the highest point on the Going To The Sun Road, which runs roughly east-west through the park, over the continental divide.

More after the jump…

This was shot late morning, just before the sun crept over the ridge behind me, so this was a 2 second exposure at f/29 with a circulizer polarizer.  Processing was all in Lightroom.  I first  stacked two of my pre-made presets together and then tweaked from there.  The first preset was one of two “Gritty Look” presets I have created. Basically, they increase contrast and clarity quite a bit. Then I tried a relatively new preset I made, based on one of Jenn’s eyeliner colors, called “Silky Caramel”. (Hey, I’ll take inspiration, wherever it comes from!)  This one actually drops the clarity a bit, and then selectively increases saturation in the Red, Orange and Yellow channels to really warm up the image quite a bit.  A final few tweaks on the saturations to get it where I liked it and it was done.

This waterfall is on the East side of the divide, and eventually drains into St. Mary Lake. 5 second exposure at f/22. Processing here was a bit more complicated – I applied a basic B&W preset and then took it into Nik Software’s Sharpener Pro 3.0.  I LOVE this program!  It integrates with Lightroom and does a much better job sharpening images. For this shot (and the two below), I really was playing with the “Structure” control within Sharpener Pro.  It really brings out the cool textures in the rock.  It does seem to over-sharpen a little in the tree on this shot, but I kind of liked that so I left it. After that, a quick tweak of the Tone Curve to increase the contrasts, a final cropping and it was ready!

This is Running Eagle Falls, also called “Trick Falls”.  It’s on the East side of the Park, very close to Two Medicine Lake.  The Blackfeet Reservation is immediately adjacent to the Park’s Eastern boundary, and the Blackfeet stories say that Running Eagle is the warrior name given to a woman who went on a vision quest at this waterfall.  It’s called Trick Falls because when the water level is low (in spring before the melt begins, and in fall before the snows begin again), water only comes out in the underneath part.  I actually visited this waterfall in August of last year and this was the case then.  However, this year has been quite wet in the Western US, so water levels are still high right now and water was coming over the top part of the falls as well, which was quite an awesome site.

Exposure was 2.5 seconds at f/22.  As I said above, this one got a fair treatment with Sharpener Pro’s Structure control to bring out the texture in the rocks. After that I tweaked the color cast in the rocks to warm them up again.  It was fairly early morning for these shots – that together with the fact that the water in Glacier National Park is so blue meant the camera ended up with quite a blue cast to the image. I didn’t mind it on the water but didn’t like it on the rocks, so I used the adjustment brush to paint some warmth back in there.

Last one. For this image, I got as close as possible to the falls to really focus on the lower part of Running Eagle Falls.  This shot was 6 seconds long at f/29 through the polarizer to really draw out the white water trails.  Again, I had fun playing with the structure control to emphasize the very cool faults and fractured texture in the rocks surrounding it.

Anyway, that’s some of what I did last week.  Hope you enjoy these!

I also attended a couple days of the North American Indian Days festival that was being held in Bronwing, on the Blackfeet Reservation.  Stay tuned for those pics coming soon.