Blazing My Own Trail, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.
The morning after the Eastern Sierras Workshop was over my friend Dali and I headed back to Rock Creek Road to photograph all the beautiful Aspens we saw at their peak the afternoon before.

This shot was one I worked for. These Aspens lined the side of mountain and to get the snow capped mountain in my background I needed to climb up this mountain. There were no trails up anywhere that I could see. So hiking up around rock formations, and bushes of sage I blazed a new trail up, up, up. In some spots I was able to go up the paths that the melting snow had cut out of the mountain side. Dali wasn’t coming up he said…it didn’t take him too long to start following me up.
I think this is close to 1000ft up.

The view was well worth the effort.

PP- My sky was flat! I tried everything I know…my Photoshop skills are meager! I tried levels, and didn’t like that so I tried curves- didn’t like that either, sharpening with luminosity boosted – didn’t work, finally I tried something new. I used the Targeted Adjustment Tool on the sky. That seemed to help…it’s not great but the clouds look like they have a bit more depth than anything else I tried. There has to be something one can do to fix a flat sky besides replacing it…isn’t there?
Vibrance, and clarity, a little unsharp mask, and resized.

Nikon D300s, Nikkor 17-35mm @ 35mm, f13, 1/15s, ISO 200, Manual Mode, On a Tripod