Even though Mt. Shasta is only 60 miles from my home, I find it difficult to photograph, and as a result I have very few photos of it that I like. As the full moon approached in early May this year I thought I might be able to get a dramatic photo of it with the meeting of three natural events, the near full moon rising over the mountain, lupine and other wildflowers growing in the grasslands at the mountain’s base and some great sunset light to set the mood.
In this line of work, things rarely go as planned or hoped. The flowers and the moon were there on cue, but the sky was clear and less than dramatic. Also, the wind in the grassland was blowing enough to create entirely too much motion in the foreground flowers. In addition, the spot I needed to be in to line up the moon behind the mountain also meant the sun was directly at my back, creating very flat front lighting on all my subjects. I took several shots without really finding a good composition and not being very excited by the plain evening light. I also found there wasn’t enough light to keep the entire scene in focus while maintaining enough shutter speed to freeze the movement of the flowers in the foreground. In the end, blurred flowers, an out of focus mountain and an uninteresting sky kept me from taking any keepers.
As the light faded I packed up and started back to the car. As I hiked over the top of a hill past a patch of indian paintbrush I noticed that the mountain was glowing in the reflected twilight and the sky had become much darker and moody. The only problem was that the wind was still blowing and the forground held very little light. A full five second exposure would now be needed to get the correct exposure and still keep everything in focus. I decided that might as well try experimenting with some fill flash to see if I could illuminate the foreground.
I knew that if my flash was mounted on my camera I would have the same flat, front light issue that I had been having with the sun before it set. I also knew that at close range the shadows cast would look very unnatural. However, with the five second exposure time I had time to trip the shutter on the camera and walk off to the side to manually fire my flash at a position and distance to create some nice, somewhat natural looking fill light. The single strobe of the flash also helped freeze the movement of the flowers caused by the wind. After several tries I was able to fine tune my approach and create the photo at the beginning of this article. It still isn’t the photo I have envisioned from this location, but it is the best photo from the session. In the end I was glad I took the time to get the camera out again and experiment a bit.