Singh-Ray grad ND filter question

[BrianShaw]

Otherwise, the element of self-promotion and exaggeration seems to have gotten involved.

Seems to be contagious….

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alas, the closest I've gotten to granite this past week was in my enlarger carrier. The next session, it will be dolomite instead. And in terms of your latest comment, Brian, I can verify 100% of what I stated. But I'm not in any mood for a food fight. Granite pebbles via slingshot, maybe. ... I sure miss my old place in the Sierras, big granodiorite boulders, and far bigger chunks in the canyon, and especially uphill where the big walls and peaks are. But it just got too hard to still upkeep the property heading into old age.

Time to move on, and clean a few of my own filters, and load up a little more 8x10 film this afternoon. I've pretty much said everything I wanted to about the pros and mostly cons of neutral grads.

 

[Bill Burk]

I’ll still pack them when I shoot slides. If I find a scene where there’s flowers in front and a mountain in back, I’ll make the time to twiddle.

Knowing what I know now, I would recommend using them sparingly to just lift the veil of blackness in the foreground.

I would not try to mimic HDR.

 

[Bill Burk]

I brought this home from Florence. Guy on the ferry gave me a funny look because most packs he tossed onboard were featherweight going back.

 

[DREW WILEY]

That is typical quartz monzonite, but with slightly bigger dark inclusions. That variety underlies much of the lower elevations as well, but decomposes more easily over the millennia than denser diorite per se or andesitic granite. I'm no expert in the field of plutonic geology, and studied glacial geomorphology more. But even in your just posted picture you can spot a great variety of rocks left behind in glacial moraines, and then often sorted through by steams afterwards. That's a good way to surmise the variety of geoIogy way upstream from there. I sure get homesick for the rocks in the Sierras, so have to visit there from time to time. It's not all that far away. If you ever get the chance, you can see extreme vertical jointing of granite up the nearby Bear Creek drainage on Feather Peak and Seven Gables. It's uphill and off trail after the first 12 miles, but not especially difficult to get to from the west side. The narrow road into Bear Creek Dam is negotiable in any high-center SUV or pickup; but 4WD is preferable. You'll find a lot of that dense tan quartzite in your picture along Bear Creek the first few miles up from the dam, and wonderful campsites with lovely pools and little falls; also, starting uphill, the largest diameter quaking aspens I have ever seen anywhere.

 

[takilmaboxer]

I was trained as a geologist many years ago and have a bunch of granite samples in my garden. My favorite came from the Wind River Range and is 2,500 million years old. At that distant time the Winds looked very much like today's Sierra Nevada, but without tourists or photographers.
Photo note: "granite" can be anywhere from dark grey to brilliant white even in a single outcrop.

 

[DREW WILEY]

In some places, the granite in the Winds does look similar to the "salt and pepper" quartz monzonite typical of much of the Sierra. But you have a lot more intrusive elements in the Sierra, and distinct sections of sheer metamorphic uplift constituting stunning otherworldly "roof pendant" formations of dark especially sheer peaks. Lots of volcanic intrusion too. The tan rocks which Bill showed are remnants of a far earlier era, and those are abundant in the old Miocene and Pliocene riverbeds down the west slope, often embedded in sandstone, from back when the gradient of the Sierra was far more gentle than now, when it was still a low range. I have some beautiful petrified palm wood bookends weathered out from those sandstone strata.

I wish I had spent more time studying mineralogy and plutonic geology. But I was obsessed with geomorphology, especially the periglacial kind, and specifically in relation to the Ice Age peopling of North America. It's amazing how they traveled above the ice-filled canyons, and no doubt across glaciers themselves, while the tribes afterwards mainly traveled through those valleys, using the same routes and passes which hikers use today.

But believe me - you can still find significant areas of the high Sierra where you can walk for a week without seeing anyone else. I have done exactly that numerous times. You just have to avoid the popular sections, and be willing to get off trail into the steep. In the Winds it's a little easier to find solitude, but not everywhere. Quite a long drive from here. The last long backpack trip I took in the Winds was in the northern section the summer I was 69, a bit prior to the pandemic. I sure love that area!