San Gabriel Mountains in Haze

COMMENTS

Noe said at 10:39 a.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Wow... Fantastic views!!

Dunster said at 10:46 a.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Some great shots. I like the above-the-plane one for it's oddity, but you got the best one up first.

Shampoo said at 10:51 a.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
These are wonderful! Looks surreal until you see the plane...

Ciudi said at 11:29 a.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
speachless - go directly to my favorites

Wlk68 said at 11:50 a.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Beautiful misty mountains!!!

JuDeck said at 1:48 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Very pretty....I hope you had the zoom going in the shot with the plane.

Dsearls said at 3:28 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
These were all shot at the oddest time and place: from the sunny side of a United 777, inbound from Heathrow to LAX, against the sun, over the wing, from behind the wing. All were shot with a Canon 30D and a Tamron 18-200 zoom lens. The lens itself is not great: it's fuzzy at the long end and has barrel distortion at the short end, and it's not very fast. But it's flexible and cheap, which is why it's my workhorse. The mountains are the San Gabriels, which form the wall of rock on the north side of the Los Angeles basin. The haze is not smog, but more likely a natural sorting-out of marine-layer mist, some of it produced by pounding surf on the coast, nor far distant. The highest of the mountains, and the one featured in some of the shots, is San Antonio, or Old Baldy, which is over 10,000 feet high. It can get so much snow in the winter that it actually supports the Mt. Baldy ski area. Two years ago it got over 9 feet in one night and the skiing the next day was primo. Thanks to Baldy, you can surf and ski in the same day. Anyway, soon as I saw this scene, I began shooting. It was a rare opportunity.

Chiloedream said at 4:59 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Superbe, bravo

AliDar said at 6:49 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Beautiful colours and layering! Very nice work!

Rheap said at 6:55 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Superb mountain shots..

Klfillar said at 10:51 p.m. on Aug 10, 2007:
Great presentation. The way you ordered them really added to their beauty.

Experience said at 4:37 a.m. on Aug 11, 2007:
Bellissime montagne, complimenti per le foto.

Brian_Doyle said at 8:57 a.m. on Aug 11, 2007:
Thank you for explaining how the shots were taken. I love the first one. Were all the picture stand alone or did you layer or combine Any? Thank you for sharing.

Dsearls said at 11:24 a.m. on Aug 11, 2007:
As you can see from <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/docsearls/sets/72157600573088191/">this Flickr set</a>... http://flickr.com/photos/docsearls/sets/72157600573088191/ ... the first shot is actually a panoramic shot. I tried scaling and panning to get the whole shot in, but that didn't work. Anyway, no, I did no layering. Don't even know how, actually. All I know is how to change levels, contrast, and make other adjustments like that. I don't know which of these were adjusted. I'm sure the shots of Mt. Baldy (those with detail), and the other inbound plane were adjusted, because at that point I was well down into the haze itself over the L.A. basin. The blue-ish shots from afar were of mountains that really did look like that.