Mt Washington

Risky Business

Going off trail may not be the smartest but some pictures are worth it.

This week we took an extended trip to New Hampshire to test our metal climbing Mt Washington. To be honest I did not know what to expect as never been. I’ve been told there can be extreme temperature differences between the foot of the mountain and the summit. A wardrobe change may be required to accommodate the the potential extreme weather conditions. Also the terrain would be rough with rocks ranging from the size of an office desk to that of small cars. Luckily for us the weather held out and it was a brisk 60-70 degrees all the way to the top.

2 waterfalls along the trail up Mt Washington

On this trip I decided to experiment with long exposures since there would be many landscape photography opportunities. I wanted to try my hand at capturing that milky water look I’ve seen many times on instagram. I think I was able to achieve it in some of the photos I took but I made the mistake of not increasing my shutter speed when switching back to taking candid pictures of my follow hikers. At the time I did not realize 1/200 shutter would not be fast enough and I missed focus and introduced some unwanted motion blur into more than a few shots. A lesson learned. I under estimated the speed of which people move when hiking. I now I know a shutter speed of 1/500 or higher would been better.

Marker near the summit and the Cog Train at the summit of Mt Washington

As for long exposure landscape photos a shutter speed between 0.4” to 1.0” with an fstop of F8-F12 seems to do the trick. Personally, what seemed to work best for me at the time was an exposure of 0.8” of a second with an fstop of F8. I did not have a tripod so any exposure longer than 0.8” was extremely difficult to keep in focus <I am only human>. Although an ND filter was not necessarily need as you can compensate with other setting or fix in post, I do recommend one for the best results. I used an variable ND filter from K&F but if I were to try again I would skip the variable ND and use a higher static ND filter, such a 64 or higher. Even though the version of variable ND filter I purchased by K&F was marketed to have zero vignetting or “X pattern” I still saw some distortion in my photos.

All in all, I would highly recommend hiking Mt Washington. Yes, it is difficult and you need to be prepared but it is worth it. The stunning scenery y and the sense of camaraderie when in a group is an amazing feeling.