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Mount Rainier National Park | Paradise Aflame

Given favorable atmospheric conditions, sunrise at Paradise can be stunning and double that when it’s peak fall colors as it was the first weekend in October. An explosion of autumnal color carpeted the Paradise landscape in fiery reds, yellows and oranges – it was sensory elation but manic when trying to zero in on a composition so I settled on this view. While the morning sun bathed the face of Mount Rainier in soul-tingling light , the autumnally painted ridge in this image would remain in shadow until the sun rose higher – but by then the special light on the mountain would be long gone. There’s a waterfall coming through that gulch down into Edith Creek basin – hidden in this image. Earlier I had scouted the Golden Gate trail to see whether I could include that waterfall but I couldn’t get Mount Rainier placed compellingly in the background. Since that didn’t work out I planted myself along Skyline trail to get this image. I originally had the entire mountain in frame but the foreground meadow had too many random clumps of vegetation and trees, so I opted to crop for a tighter shot later. There had been some fresh snowfall during the past week so the mountain looked less bare.

 

Flickr Explore 5jan22

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Uploaded on January 5, 2022