LookingintotheFurnace Archives - Bliss Photographics

Red Hills Ridge Rising

Musings: How I worked this Scene

This is tough capture that your not going to get on your cell phone lol. Let me set the stage for this stage play beyond most of your picture taking experiences.

To have this melodrama unfold in your mind, please understand that that silhouetted ridge is 40 miles from my camera. The sun a bit further. With the prodigious size of the optics, a significant wind cross section can be a factor moving your camera about. Not so much for this bright light capture. Shutter speed will dampen that motion. You need to use a fast shutter 1/2000th sec or higher so as not to gather too much light. Also LOW ISO numbers (camera sensitivity).

The most important thing is setting your camera to a HIGH a f-stop number as you lens will go. If you don’t, this WILL cook your camera’s sensor if your not working through a pin hole sized aperture. Talk about a bright scene….. The human eye has no right to be looking into such a harsh environment. (Disclaimer below)

Working from a high ridge helps get above the hazier air (at times) closer to the ground out of the picture. It improves the angle. Position is everything. Now I’d love to have a cell tower or a building for scale. Alas, there are not many up in this country with no cell service lol. Those are full sized trees and they are really REALLY far away👀 3200mm lens involved in this. Tripod for sure lol.

I remind you that it’s not the sun that is setting/falling here. We live on a spinning ball with the horizon actually doing the rising thusly slowly covering the face of the sun. The “Sun Slit” under the thick cloud deck above was just a sliver. Only allowing this fleeting scene to penetrate the space between the cloud with the opaque earth.

Disclaimer: Do not point your camera at the sun without knowing that DSLR’s have a direct light path that can and will blind you if you watch the sun through it. I use mirrorless full frame technology and watch scenes on video. No direct light path AND

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Red Hills Ridge Rising

Sunset ON the BigHorn Mountains : Boy was that bright 😎

There are two ridges here. The lowest darker ridge is the top of the “Red Hills” 40 miles distant. The second ridge is the Bighorn Mountain Chain 130 miles out. The clouds and snow storms were moving across the top of the peaks. With the sun here cutting into the cloud deck obscuring the high peak on the right. . The scene was very intense and bright with all the ice in the air acting like a projector screen. . The foreground trees are a few hundred yards out on this 1200 mm telephoto shot . Sunset ON the Bighorn Mountains

This is the second evening this fall that I’ve had “Sort” of a weather window. Seeing the Big Horns such a long ways away isn’t common. I remind you that this area of the sky is about the size of a postage stamp at arms length. All the while through a 3 foot long lens. Observing this scene change by the second as the clouds moved by quickly. I was moving between trees during this shooting. I wanted to see what the parallel ridge would present as far as opportunity to frame this scene. The sun is only setting over the Big Horn Mountains for a few more days this fall. I keep moving north while the sun moves to the south. This keeps the angle until it doesn’t lolol.

Photographers notes:

Sunset ON the Bighorn Mountains was sooo bright…. F57 was the final fstop setting at 1/2000th at ISO 100 were the settings. The high fstop (maximum for this Canon supertelephoto) accounts for the trees in the foreground being in focus at all. The trees on the first ridge are in focus too but the clouds and moisture is blurring the Big Horns at that great a distance.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.