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Spent the end of last week and the weekend hiking Mt. Whitney in eastern California. My legs are sore. I'd like to go back at some point in the near future and do it all in one day. Not this time.

This was my 2nd time hiking with my camera (K100D). I took about 700 pictures. On the advice of folks here, I took my 18-55 II kit, FA50 and 100-300. The 100-300 didn't come out of the bag. Took my tripod along too.

Thanks for all the advice. All criticisms and comments welcome. If anyone feels like it, the rest of the photos are in this Flickr set.

Here are a few of the shots. Click on 'em to pick on the large versions.

Restaurant sign in Lone Pine, CA.




Creek next to our trailhead campsite.



Looking back down the valley. Lone Pine Lake on the bottom right. I HDR'd this with Photomatix. Any advice on making it look more natural? I think for the future I'm going to track down a graduated ND filter.



Mt. Muir from Trail Camp at 12,000ft.




Wish I could make my elbow disappear from this one. Oops.




Departing camp the morning after summiting. And a 14 hour rainstorm. So happy to be dry again.

[sfdealer]

I appreciate all the comments!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/3854549975_0c27802911_b.jpg
the way the clouds are creeping over the rock faces on this one are great looking. And from your perspective that pond/lake down on the right there looks totally weird... like its not flat or something... very intriguing.

We had a hard time believing what we were seeing when we came around the corner. Good material to work with! Thanks.

Hey there, nice work.

Thanks. Looking forward to learning about working in heavy fog from you at the Sept. meetup. I've camped at (or real near) Bean Hollow before. COLD. FOGGY.

Really nice work with this series, the shot of Mt. Muir at 12,000 feet with the clouds drifting in front and the gorgeous lake needs to be a wall poster. Great shots.

Thank you! It's headed for an mpix metallic print (high rollin!). It's actually a lower elevation shot down the valley over Lone Pine Lake. The next one down is at 12k of Mt. Muir.

Very nicely done - a variety of top shots.
An effective use of the kit lens on a beginner's dSLR - results speak for themselves...

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks. I picked up the lens from Deadwolfbones a month ago. Having 18mm at the bottom end makes such a difference v. the 28 I had before. Also the IQ beats the Quantaray I had before.

Isnt Mt Whitney one of Ansel Adams fav shot he composed in 1944?
Great series

cheers

Yep. It's easy to see what inspired him. I'm going to convert a few to B&W in his honor. I think I ended up with backgrounds that were too busy on most of my Ansel-esque tree shots. The trees don't really pop out. Thanks!

Very nice. I particularly like the 3rd and 4th shots. The lake in 3 does look a little sloped, but this is a trick of perspective which goes away after you look at it a moment.

Mike

Thank you. The lake is perched pretty much on the edge of a cliff there. We came around the corner down the trail and saw what the clouds were doing up the ridgeline and froze in our tracks. Two of us shot for about 5 minutes. I'm not usually a brand cheerleader (though definitely a cheerleader of this forum), I have to say I'm happy that the K100 held up to his Nikon D200. I also remembered to bring my circular polarizer and lens hood, so who knows.

Beautiful series all well thought out.

Thank you! It was nice to find a few I loved out of the sea of pictures I shot. Definitely made lugging the camera worth it.

Excellent series - loved the shots - #3 and #4 are especially beautiful!

You did well with Photomatix'd image... I suspect that your thoughts that the mirrored lake/mountain shots may go even better with a Grad ND may hold some weight.

Regards,
Marc

Thank you! On a related note, would it be a waste of $14 to buy this ND filter, or should I wait until I can afford one of the nicer ones? Most of the filter threads I've read on here say to get the best glass possible (duh), but I figured I'd check.

Nice series. Another place is now added to my visit list.

Go! It's fantastic. Lots of shooting to be done from a desert floor in the valley, through pine forests, and above tree line to the upper mountain moonscape. Pretty cool.

Wonderful group of photos - everyone very well done technically and compositionally. Super job.

Jer

Thanks! I assume you're not including the elbow in the 5th shot

The 3rd and 4th shots are amazing. Nicely done!

Thanks. We weathered a pretty nasty rainstorm that cleared the morning of the first shot. The howling winds and post-storm weather definitely had something to do with the odd low altitude clouds billowing up from the valley. Makes it easy to forget having to dash into the rain every half hour from midnight to 3am to re-attach the fly to another boulder when you get to shoot in that lighting the next day.

[xs400]

Nice shots.

I climbed Mt. Whitney about 10 years ago. You had much nicer weather than when I was there. When we reached the summit it was snowing and the wind was blowing about 50 mph. We had the summit all to ourselves because no one else was dumb enough to climb it that day.

Thanks for sharing.

[Heinrich Lohmann]

That is good work indeed, thanks for showing us.