Cottonwood Tree, Autumn, Glacier National Park

While visiting Glacier National Park at the beginning of October I was pleased to see that we arrived in time for a wonderful display of fall color throughout the park and surrounding areas. While walking along the Trail of the Cedars, we crossed a bridge over Avalanche Creek. Looking down the creek this particularly Cottonwood tree immediately captured my attention. It seemed to stand twice as tall as everything around it and had a gorgeous yellow canopy, that was nicely offset against the green conifers in the distance. Since a scene such as this, filled with lots of rich detailed leaves and branches, can suffer from a lower resolution capture, I prepared a composite image from 10 separate frames at 70mm.

I have sometimes found composite images difficult to assemble satisfactorily due to lens distortion, but I was pleased to find it wasn't a problem with this lens. I recently purchased an inexpensive, older Nikon 70-210mm lens, and I have been very pleased with its optics. After stitching the composite image together to create a roughly 50MP image, I cropped it down further to what you see here.

Overall I found this approach worked very well for a scene like this. I rarely remember the option when I am out shooting, and its often difficult to execute it well when you do, but it is nice when it comes together.

I have film off for development now, which I am hopeful will have some great showcases of the fall color when I get it back. Until then, I think this may be my best digital capture of the great fall color from my brief visit.

Nikon D90 | Nikon 70-210mm@70mm | f/8 | 1/80s | ISO200 | Handheld | Composite

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