Looking Across a Valley to Mountains Beyond...(HDR, Banff National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: Looking across this view, I felt the dynamic range might be too much to pick up the wide range from the clouds to the trees in the valley below. I decided on using 5 bracketed photos and combining them with Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. I later used a Low Key CEP filter to tone down the brightness of the image especially with the nearby trees.

An Amazing View of the Bow Valley (Banff National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: This is the the view from the top of Sulphur Mountain looking to the northeast. What I wanted to capture here (other than the obvious view below) was the feeling while standing at this point along Sulphur Mountain. One has to image the cool bit of an early morning day in the Canadian Rockies. Then there's the wind whipping around as it blows through the valleys and down the mountainsides. Occasionally there's the gurgling sound of a raven overhead curiously watching the people below. That's the setting to appreciate this view...to the image now :-) Below in the Bow Valley, one can see the Bow River flowing through and beyond the city of Banff. In the middle of the image is Tunnel Mountain which I would later be hiking that afternoon. To the immediate left right of that is a portion of Mount Rundle which is always a sight to take in! Off in the distance is Stoney Squaw Mountain and Cascade Mountain and other peaks of the Palliser and Fairholme Range with Lake Minnewanka nestled amongst the latter two. By capturing and including some of the nearby hillsides of trees, I felt a person looking at this image would easily take in the setting of a wonder at the mountains all around in this part of Banff National Park.

Views of Mount Cory and Other Jagged Peaks from Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station (Banff National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: When you're up on a high point overlooking a valley with the Bow River, you pretty much have only majestic views to take in! From this location where I was standing around the old cosmic ray station, I had a view looking across to mountain peaks of Mount Cory, Mount Louis, Mount Edith and others of the Sawback Range. What I wanted to capture with this view was just the sheer majesty of the mountain peaks off in the distance. Here and there were some areas where the sunlight was coming through the clouds; other areas were hidden in the shadows from the clouds above. What I did with this view to help minimize the clouds (which were rather blah that day), was angle my SLR camera slightly downward. That way one would look across the valley and then to the mountain peaks and they just seem to just stand out bigger.

Mount Norquay and a Setting Along the Banks of the Bow River (Banff National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: I took several images at this point with the turn of the Bow River just prior to going under the bridge in Banff. I was trying to find that angle and composition to really show the most of the mountain as a backdrop but have the broad sweeping look with the Bow River to my front. I eventually settled on this as the kind of a split for the best image captured of this setting. One could see the Bow River seemingly filling up the near portion of the image with evergreen trees lining the riverbanks. Then far off in the distance was Mount Norquay with clouds and some patches of blue skies above.