The Flickr Lakebeyondthetrees Image Generatr

Most of the images I captured walking the Imus Creek Loop were zoomed in to focus on peaks or view of mountains through the trees....maybe a little pulled back with the focal length to capture more of the surrounding area to complete the setting of the image. Here though, I pulled back as much as I could with my 24-120mm Nikkor lens while slightly angling my SLR camera upward. Not so much to not include some nearby trees, but more to capture the skies above. Up there were thin wisps of clouds filling the skies above the mountains. I later was drawn into the color contrast of the image with the greens in the bottom and blues up top.

A conversion to black & white using Silver Efex Pro 2 where I used some color filters to bring out a much richer tonal contrast for the final image.

From time to time, there'd be a clearing in the tall evergreen trees all around while walking the Imus Creek Loop. It was then one had a chance to take in amazing views across and of Lake Chelan. Here the lake waters had a very green (if not a little turquoise) look. A perfect complement of colors with the evergreens going up the nearby and far-off mountainsides. The blue skies with wisps of clouds would then be a nice color contrast to complete the setting.

A view looking to the west-southwest to the snowcapped peak of Tupshin Peak while hiking along the Purple Creek Trail.

With the tall evergreens all around the mountain peaks off in the distance, I could never tire of this view walking the Imus Creek Loop, even if it was my last day in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park Service Complex. To paraphrase John Muir, I was in the mountains with a kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver. Anywho, it was exciting being in the North Cascade mountains with the feel of the cool morning air to breathe in and the eyes soaking in amazing views!

Having captured several images at this overlook along the Imus Creek Loop, I decided to use this and work on a black & white image in Silver Efex Pro 2. I was to use some color filters to bring out a much richer tonal contrast for the final image.

A portrait orientation of a setting I'd captured while walking the Purple Creek Trail around the lodge area at Stehekin in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park Service Complex. The idea for this image was similar to a another landscape orientation image I captured where one focused on stock photos to use for postcards. For this image though, I wanted to use a portrait orientation as I've read (or my understanding is that) many magazines prefer use that style for their publications. In the end, the image is about a forest all around but a view beyond to mountains in the North Cascade mountains of Washington.

A look to the southwest while walking the Imus Creek Loop around the Stehekin area in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park Service Complex. With a slight break in the nearby forest of evergreens, I was able to catch this look to Castle Rock and other ridge and mountainsides of the Bonanza Massif. One can also see a little bit of a green/turquoise look to the lake water just below the middle portion of the image. For metering, it was a matter of finding that mean exposure with the nearby evergreens caught in the light of the morning sun and mountainside beyond a little less exposed. I was able to later use control point and color control points in Capture NX2 to bring out contrast, hues and tones for the final image.

An overlook and clearing in the tall evergreen trees while hiking the Imus Creek Loop before it intersects and heads up the Purple Creek Trail. While I'd seen similar views to this along the lakeshore the past two days, but up about 1000' higher, it gave for amazing views! This is a view looking to the northwest in the North Cascades National Park Service Complex with McGregor Mountain on one side and mountainsides of Tupshin Peak and Sisi Ridge on the other. While capturing a wider angle might have brought out that visual feel for this mountain valley setting, I decided to zoom and and focus on this one area with its primary, complementary colors of blue and green. I later used some CEP filters (Low Key, Polarization and Graduated Neutral Density) in Capture NX2 which seemed to best bring out this look even with the bright sunlight of the late morning.

A Postcard. I captured this image on my Nikon D800E while hiking the Imus and then Purple Creek Trail while staying at Stehekin in Lake Chelan National Recreation Area of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex, While most definitely beautiful in and of itself, it was the "postcard" look that really drew me into the image captured that day. I posted the original here on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/14723335@N05/36818952022/in/album-7...). I truly loved that view of mountains and trees!

In painting this image with Adobe Sketch, I focused on a few techniques and ideas. One was new brushes made available from Kyle Webster through the Adobe CC subscriptions. The hardest part was going through them all in order to figure out what I might want to do! Crosshatching ones really came in handy with the trees. That allowed me to better approximate the look with evergreen trees and the branches. I still used the same techniques previously learned with variation of colors and tones to show shapes and distances. For the clouds, I experimented with a few ideas on Kyle's dry media brushes with chalks and pastels. I like the feel, but I think they work better in other areas.

In the right foreground of the digital painting, you'll find that stick figure image of me "hiking" with my Cubbies hat, loving my time exploring the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park Service Complex...a beautiful spring day in the North Cascade mountains of Washington!

I got the idea for this image from an article I read on ways to improve one's capture of stock photo type images (digital-photography-school.com/20-tips-improve-travel-sto...). One of the points of the article is to walk around a gift shop or park store that has postcards and see what they have on the shelves. From that you might get an idea on photo opportunities. The idea being if postcards use these views then other places might consider images captured for stock photos. So while walking the Purple Creek Trail just up the mountainside from the main lodge area, I turned around and caught this look to the northwest through the trees to McGregor Mountain with a little bit of Lake Chelan showing through the trees in the left bottom portion of the image.

The postcard that I got the idea for this image was one of many labeled with Stehekin.