Drive 2007 - Day 16 - Drives - Beneath the Waves

Drive 2007 - Day 16

article and photographs by Ben Lincoln

The last stop on this trip was Crater Lake National Park. I'd been there at least once when I was very young, but I didn't remember it very well.

Crater Lake was a favourite of my grandfather, and it's easy to see why. The lake itself is incredible; it's the purest blue I've ever seen. The caldera is colourful and shaped in ways I haven't seen other mountains in the area. Surrounding all of this is a beautiful alpine meadow-type environment.

You may notice that this page doesn't actually contain a picture of the lake proper (although several shots include small parts of it). Capturing the entire view of the lake is no easy task, but I did try. With my widest lens at the time^[1], I had to make it a 6-shot panorama (3 wide by 2 high) to get the lake from edge to edge. In a misguided attempt to capture the blue colour of the water in all of its glory, I took each of these 6 shots multispectrally, and did each multispectral component as a bracketed set (three exposures for near infrared and ultraviolet, four for visible light) so I could create HDR versions of each component to work from. In case you don't want to do the math, that's 60 photos total. When I got home I quickly realized that this was simply too many to piece together given all the manual steps involved. I thought at first that I could just pick the best of each of the bracketed sets (winnowing the total down to 18), but the extreme amount of time it took to take all the photos in the first place meant that the clouds (and their reflections), the ripples in the water, and the sun itself had moved too far to create a seamless panorama.

The good news is that I was very happy with some of the other shots I took, and I came back to Crater Lake a year later during one of my drives in 2008 (to be posted in the near future) and did get a photo of the whole lake.

Wizard Island Shorelike, Crater Lake National Park

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-UVA

NIR-G-B

NIR-G-UVA

NIR-B-UVA

R-G-UVA

R-B-UVA

G-B-UVA

NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

NIR-RGB-UVA

The blue of Crater Lake's water is tricky to capture with a camera, but I think I managed it here. This telephoto shot of the shoreline of Wizard Island is another example of water's different appearances multispectrally.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 70-210mm
Filters: Standard Set For Larger-Diameter Lenses
Date Processed: 2009-08-09
Version: 2.0

Crater Lake Caldera 1

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-B

NIR-R-UVA

NIR-G-B

NIR-G-UVA

NIR-B-UVA

R-G-UVA

R-B-UVA

G-B-UVA

NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

Crazy Lab Colour

This is one of my favourite pictures of the Crater Lake area, and from this trip. The colours of the caldera are spectacular enough to our own eyes, but manage to be even more interesting when you factor in a wider spectrum. The "crazy lab colour" variation is a failed (but in an extremely colourful way) experiment I tried after reading about some other photographers' techniques. I guess it does a good job of highlighting the boundary between sky and landscape, but there are better ways to do that.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 35mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-08-09
Version: 2.0

Crater Lake Caldera 2

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-B

NIR-G-B

G-B-UVA

NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

Not all of the caldera is so colourful, but the rock formations are always amazing.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 50mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-08-15
Version: 2.0

Phantom Ship, Crater Lake National Park

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-B

NIR-R-UVA

NIR-G-B

NIR-G-UVA

NIR-B-UVA

R-G-UVA

R-B-UVA

G-B-UVA

NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

Another of my favourite Crater Lake photos. Everything just sort of came together for this one, especially in terms of the reflection.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 100mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-08-15
Version: 2.0

Crater Lake National Park 6

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-G-B

R-G-UVA

G-B-UVA

NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

Taken on the outer slope of the volcano.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 35mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-08-15
Version: 2.0

Crater Lake Caldera 3

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-B

NIR-R-UVA

NIR-G-B

NIR-G-UVA

NIR-B-UVA

R-G-UVA

R-B-UVA

G-B-UVA

NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

One last shot of a section of Crater Lake's caldera.

Date Shot: 2007-09-15
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm(?)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-08-15
Version: 2.0

On my way west towards Interstate 5, I drove through the Umpqua National Forest. I had a bizarre episode of deja vu upon seeing this place, because throughout the forest are unearthly dark basalt monoliths, veiled in green moss and poking up towards the sky. I had vague memories of them, but I'd always assumed they were from some nearly-forgotten dream. I knew that if I stopped to take pictures I wouldn't be able to get home until the next day, so I made a note to come back and give them my full attention. This is also something that I did in 2008, and will be posted at the same time as the second set of Crater Lake photos.

After driving several hundred more miles, I was home again^[2].

Date: 15 September 2007
Starting Mileage: 68323
Ending Mileage: 69039
Distance Travelled (Day): 716 miles
Distance Travelled (Trip): 6685 miles
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Day): 22.4
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Trip): 211.8
Average Fuel Economy (Trip): 31.6 miles per gallon

GPS Map of Day 16

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Footnotes

A 28mm Nikon Series E lens. My D70 has a crop factor of 1.5, so such a lens only has the wide-angle coverage of a 42mm lens on a 35mm camera (or a DSLR with a full-frame sensor), which is hardly wide-angle at all. With an 18mm DX lens (equivalent to about 27mm on a 35mm film camera) the lake can be squeezed into a 2-shot wide panorama depending on the viewpoint. I suspect that if I had a D700 or other full-frame sensor-equipped camera, I would still need a 20mm (or possibly as short as 15mm) to capture all of Crater Lake in a single exposure. The main reason it's such a challenge is because it is after all a giant crater, meaning you can't get back from the edge very far at all and still have a view of the lake (unless you are in a helicopter or other aircraft of course).

It's not an unnaturally-abrupt ending, it's an homage to Neal Stephenson.