Upper Crystal Lake

On a beautiful July 4th weekend, I took a trip up to Crystal Lake, Mount Rainier National Park, with a friend. Although the snow at lower Crystal Lake was almost completely melted off, the upper lake was still frozen over and surrounded by snow. The reflections in the melting snow atop the lake made a good foreground for this shot.

It was hard to get the reflections just right, because I was standing just about at the edge of the lake (which was hard to find under the snow), and I ended up shooting from a fairly high angle in order to shoot over the reeds in the foreground.

The combination of black basalt, snow, and pines against a cloudless sky made the scene almost completely monochromatic to begin with, so I used Ilford Delta to get this black and white image.