Autumn Light Collection

Autumn at Teal Lake

Viewing Teal Lake from Mount Josephine and State Highway 61 in the Grand Portage Indian Reservation along Minnesota's north shore of Lake Superior.

Color in the aspen clones across the landscape were peaking this day, and was further accentuated by the overcast sky. I used a polarizing filter to further saturate the yellow of the aspen. Overcast light such as this also provides smooth transitions between highlights and shadows that would have been impossible to achieve in full daylight.

This location provides a sweeping view of the lake and the Reservation, and to convey this required creating a single-row gigapan comprised of stitching together 8 high-resolution verticle images. For situations like this I like to use a standard prime lens set to a small aperture of at least f8.0, and employ the hyper-focal distance method to achieve maximum depth of field and sharpness. A focal length of 50mm to even 200mm compresses the field of view and provide excellent sharpness that can’t be achieved when cropping shots taken at wide-angle focal lengths. Longer focal lengths require stitching more images, and using vertical orientations for each image means you might be able to get by with a single- as opposed to a multi-row panorama.

The results of this technique will print out quite large (in this case about six feet wide, but with a longer focal length up to 15 feet wide!) and with exceptional detail and clarity when viewed up-close. With the advent of digital technology and image-processing software, landscape photographers have never before been able to accurately convey the sweeping landscapes mother nautre has to offer.

Grand PortageGrand Portage Indian ReservationMinnesotaMount JosephineNorth ShorePlacesTeal Lakepublished