Rocky Mountains

Believe it or not, photographing and capturing the beauty and grandeur of the Rocky Mountains is a challenge for a couple of reasons.

First, using a wide angle lens tends to make the mountains look too small and using a telephoto brings individual mountains closer, which takes away from the immenseness of the scene. Of course, when I photographed the Rocky Mountains in and around Banff, Alberta I used both my 17-40 mm and 75-300 mm lenses. I think I photographed every scene with both lenses at varying zoom settings.

The contrast between the bright snow on the mountains and the darker trees and land poses the second problem. If you expose images for the land, the mountains would be too bright, so most of the time I focussed on the mountains so they would be properly exposed.

The foreground in the first photo is a little dark, but the lighting on the mountains is pretty good. The mountains in the wider views of the same scene are a little bright because I focussed on the waterfall and rocks to try and maintain a good balance between bright and dark. The river in the third scene brightened up the foreground creating a nice balance and, because the mountains are a little more dominant, I liked this image better than the others.