Mitchell Point Viewing Area

This is a view from Mitchell Point viewing area on Highway 84, just west of Hood River. It was taken on a trip to bring my daughter home from college at the end of the year. She was going to school in Idaho, and I stopped, climbed up here, and took the VR. I had to work fast because the sun’s shadow was getting close to my setup, and I didn’t want direct sun in the picture.

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The hardest thing about this picture was definitely the climb up to this location. It was a little steep, but also covered with sharp, shifting rocks, and made tricker with a load of VR gear.

The picture was also a little challenging because of the scene’s wide dynamic range; the sky was significantly brighter than the shadowed face of the rock. Fortunately, I took a bracketed set of pictures, so had plenty to work with. After trying several approaches, I finally settled for a combination of Photoshop HDR processing with some hand tweaking. I don’t really like the way the colors worked out on the rocks, but ran out of time since this was for a WWP entry.