Glacier National Park

[LePetomane]

Last week my wife, two dogs and I took a trip to Glacier National Park in northern Montana. Glacier is the only national park that is entirely in the state of Montana. A common misconception is that Yellowstone is in Montana. Part of it is but the majority of it is in Wyoming with the other part in Idaho which is hard to access. We found Glacier to be not as user friendly as Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Beautiful park but a lot of driving and not many trails. We did find a few trails to hike. The famous drive on the "Going to the Sun" road was closed due to fog.

It is a densely forested park, unlike YNP with the wide open spaces. The national parks in the US are not very dog friendly and we had to board the dogs at a day care facility.

A few shots.

1. View of a small stream from Avalanche Trail.



2. Dense forest.

[/url]

3. The lake at the end of Avalanche Trail.



4. More dense forest.



5. Fallen timber.



6. My daughter's property in Bozeman. She starts building this week.



7. My wife, daughter and dog.

[Virtualparagon]

Have you been to Icefields Parkway Alberta yet? Amazing scenery, hiking galore, a short jaunt from your daughter’s property.

[DanK]

Nice series, esp. #1 and 6.

For what they are worth, I have a few suggestions for those two. For #1, you could open up the shadows and then re-impose contrast with a curve. A quick-and-dirty (the amounts of each may be off) is:



For #6, I'd consider cropping a bit off the sky, which has no detail; darkening and saturating the sky a bit; and then opening up the tones of the rest by dropping the white point. Those give this:

[LePetomane]

Dan, thanks.

[Manfred M]

Dan - I think that's a great start, but I would definitely either crop or otherwise remove the bright spot near the top and then calm down some of the other areas with local dodging and burning. That would put more focus on the water and the rocks.




When it comes to the fallen log, the hot spot of sky in the top right hand corner is just begging for some sky replacement to so that it becomes less distracting. A bit of burning on the log and dodging to open up the side of the mountain...

[LePetomane]

Thanks for the tips on the edits.

Have you been to Icefields Parkway Alberta yet? Amazing scenery, hiking galore, a short jaunt from your daughter’s property.

I hae been there quite a bit. My wife has family (brother) in Edmonton so we used to travel there a lot. Banff and Jasper are beautiful parks but whenever we visited they were crowded.

[DanK]

I hae been there quite a bit. My wife has family (brother) in Edmonton so we used to travel there a lot. Banff and Jasper are beautiful parks but whenever we visited they were crowded.

I haven't had the chance to get back there for decades, but I always wondered about the national and provincial parts that abut the Banff and Jasper national parks, like Yoho and Kootenai. Can you escape the crowds by going to the accessible parts of those parks?

I was first there as a teenager, when I biked from Jasper to Banff. I repeated part of it while in college. I can't imagine doing that at my age, but I would love to get back there again.

[Manfred M]

I haven't had the chance to get back there for decades, but I always wondered about the national and provincial parts that abut the Banff and Jasper national parks, like Yoho and Kootenai. Can you escape the crowds by going to the accessible parts of those parks?

I was first there as a teenager, when I biked from Jasper to Banff. I repeated part of it while in college. I can't imagine doing that at my age, but I would love to get back there again.

Yoho and Kootnay are also National Parks, but they are in British Columbia rather than Alberta where Banff and Jasper are. Those two parks seemed less crowded than either Banff or Jasper when we visited.

My wife's brother lived in Edmonton as well, so we used to get out to that part of the country more often back then. My wife found Wells Gray Provincial Park on par with the National Parks. Waterton Lakes is effectively a small northern extension of the American Glacier National Park (which is not particularly close by to the Canadian Glacier National Park).

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[LePetomane]

Yoho and Kotenai are nice parks and don't see the crowds that Banff and Jasper do.

[Virtualparagon]

We are headed there tomorrow! Second time for us. Crowds diminish greatly on the trails, not isolated but what you gonna do? Would love to get to some of the surrounding parks. I live in SC and constantly amazed at the very few people who have heard of it while seemingly the rest of the world has.

[tshore]

Hi...new to this forum. Seeing some wonderful posts. May I ask, what are "burning" and "dodging" in this context? I assume they have to do with local adjustments to contrast... Sorry to seem dense, but these terms don't seem to be in such general use in the USA. Thanks, Tim.

[Manfred M]

Hi...new to this forum. Seeing some wonderful posts. May I ask, what are "burning" and "dodging" in this context? I assume they have to do with local adjustments to contrast... Sorry to seem dense, but these terms don't seem to be in such general use in the USA. Thanks, Tim.

Tim - both terms are actually in common use in the USA (in fact throughout the photographic world) and one famous American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, was well known for using these techniques in his work. The names come from the "wet" darkroom days and refer to local adjustments in exposure when the light from a photographic enlarger was projected onto photographic paper.

Burning is darkening a local areas in the image by allowing more light to hit the paper during exposure. Dodging is locally lightening some areas in the image by reducing the amount of light falling on the photographic paper. These terms have been adopted in the digital world and are done using photo editing software like Photoshop or Lightroom.

[lovelife65]

Thanks for the tips on the edits.



I hae been there quite a bit. My wife has family (brother) in Edmonton so we used to travel there a lot. Banff and Jasper are beautiful parks but whenever we visited they were crowded.

They are beautiful places, we made the mistake of going over the 4th of July weekend a couple years ago.... Canada's big celebration as well as ours. Needless to say, it felt like we were in London, not Banff. . But, we were able to find some great uncrowded spots to hike, away from the major tourist draws.

[LePetomane]

Interestingly we saw a lot of cars in Whitefish with Alberta plates.