Continuing the images made from a recent trip to Grand Teton National Park (WY), the morning after I arrived did not offer the sunrise I had hoped for. Instead, a storm was brewing and by dawn it looked like snow. I shot a little in (gasp) color, but disappointed in the very dark skies overhead. I headed for coffee as the rain came down.

Within a couple hours, the rain had moved across the Tetons and was working its way through the valley. I stopped at the Mount Moran turnout on Teton Park Road to practice creating a panorama image.

The lead image is a 4-image stitched pano (accomplished in Photoshop CC) which I did before processing. Infrared really needs strong light to “work” in my opinion. The foreground was in deep shadows and while I tried many methods to brighten it up in software, well, there you are. Lesson: you need strong light for infrared. Software can’t save you.

If my vision was for a single image, then I probably would have (should have) bracketed and HDR tone-mapped the file and used the 16-35mm lens. Eh. My goal was to practice capturing the images for merging into a large pano. The resulting file after cropping and straightening measures 36″ wide x 20″ tall.

A couple cool things happened while I was working this scene. I remembered to turn around to see the storm at the eastern side of the valley. The killer shot might not be in front of you — it very well may be behind you.

_87i4901-proc-flat-1280

(above) D800 converted to 720nm; Nikkor 24-120mm

When I returned to the original scene (facing the Tetons), I was thrilled to discover a rainbow. Had to break out the “visible light” camera for the show. It’s a postcard shot to remember the experience.

Keep your head on a swivel!

_d813190-proc-flat-smaller

(above) Nikon D810; Nikkor 70-200mm