I knew that there wouldn’t be a sunrise this morning – it wasn’t in the forecast. But there would be good morning light, so I awoke at 0400 to get to Highland Forest by 0445, approx 35 minutes before sunrise. I figured that would give me adequate time to hike a couple of miles to the east rim of the park, where the best light should be.
The sun climbed above the horizon as expected, without much fanfare. I bracketed an image, just to practice, but it was quite breezy, so the images (especially after a merge) will not be sharp. This image is a desaturated not to contrasty HDR, but I’ll do another in photoshop with luminosity masks as well (eventually … again, just for practice.
The rest of the morning was spent looking for dappled light and subjects of interest, which was mostly a bust, but I didn’t have any expectations.
As the sun moved higher in the sky, the light warmed up nicely.
What I didn’t expect was for my once-injured heel to get grumpy with the new activity. It had been feeling good recently, so I didn’t even consider that the extra mileage might pose a problem, but it was. Walking on level terrain was fine, but any twisting or slipping of my foot in my boot on uneven terrain was less than comfortable.
All in all, it was a nice morning, though. I put about 5 miles in with the pack on my back and that was all that I wanted and expected. I was able to capture a few decent detail images of the forest, but nothing worthy of printing or hanging on a wall.
A few deer found their way in front of my path this morning as well – the light was so low, though … I had to capture everything with a high ISO. It did give me a chance to compare JPEG vs RAW in low light, though. To be honest, for memories and images of animals in low light that I would never print larger than 4×6, JPEG performed really well. I used the digital teleconverter and allowed the camera to reduce the noise, and I am struggling to render the same detail from the cropped RAW file – it can be done, but it certainly isn’t worth the effort. Again, for a 4×6 print, or a pic to be viewed on a small screen, the images are very adequate and useable.
ISO 4000 at 300mm AND 2x digital teleconverter 
ISO 3200 at 150mm
I did capture a nice panorama image from the lodge before departing, I think. It is a northernly view; I am not sure how it will look when the sun is rising more from the south in a few months, but I think I will revisit the composition when the autumn colors are (hopefully) on display. The only problem by then will be what the fields look like so late in the season. The image was captured at 140mm, and I have 300mm available to stitch together a detailed image that might (with the right light and clouds), make for a nice, large colored-print. Time will tell.
The most successful image of the day turned out to be from my cell phone, when I stopped at Delphi Falls for breakfast. I purposefully left the camera in the car, but when I saw the potential for this scene (as the ant was crawling up the stem of the flower, I quickly pulled the camera out of my pocket and waited to see if the little guy/gal would go where I had hoped … and they did. In hindsight, I am glad that I left the camera in the car: if I had it with me, I would have needed a couple of mins prep switching lens and setting up the tripod, and I probably wouldn’t have come home with an image at all. No, I won’t be able to print it on a wall considering its sharpness and resolution, but it is very pleasing image to me nonetheless.
