Sunday, December 9, 2012

Sunday Photo(s)

Continuing with my "walking around and taking pictures" theme, I took some of Mt. Rainier yesterday. I'm learning to use a new camera, but already I'm able to do lots of things I hadn't before. Here's a photo of the mountain that I took with the old camera. See how little contrast there is between the mountain, some its features, and the sky?

Image credit: Photos taken and processed by Cujo359

Here are a couple shots of the mountain that I took from the same location as these. That link makes note of the trouble I was having seeing contrast between the blue and white. Yesterday, with mostly gray and white, I got these images:

That one was cropped from a larger photo, and reduced to be 720 pixels high. This one was reduced a lot, and also processed a bit:

Still, both look pretty good at full resolution, despite it being a cloudy day. The mountain is about as visible in the photo I took on a bright, cloudless day with the old camera. Maybe the most impressive thing, though, is illustrated by this map:

Screenshot of FoxtrotGPS displaying OpenStreetMap data by Cujo359

As the image credit line says, it's a screenshot of a map display program showing the distance from where I was standing to Mt. Rainier, which is about 42 miles from there. That should give you some idea how big that mountain is, and why it plays such a prominent role in our view of this part of the world.

While I was playing around with FoxtrotGPS and GIMP, I created this image to show the features you see in the third photo:

Image credit: Combined image of OpenStreetMap and OpenCycleMap data by Cujo359

I took the glacier data from OpenStreetMap and superimposed it on the topographic information from OpenCycleMap. The blue line is the line of site from where I was taking the photo. The peak near the center of the photo should be Liberty Cap, with the Liberty Cap Glacier in front of it, and Rainier's peak just behind it. To the left, Crater Peak and the Winthrop Glacier, to the right, Point Success and the Tahoma Glacier.

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge. Enjoy your Sunday.

UPDATE: Changed the second last paragraph to say "the third photo", since I added the introductory photo after writing that paragraph, and didn't edit carefully enough.

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