I'm sure some people wondered why I was lugging around a couple of very long lenses while walking the grounds of Mount Rushmore. The 500mm lens tends to attract a lot of attention. Kids often ask me if they can look through my "telescope"! But, I was glad that I had my 500mm lens with me. It allowed for some dramatic closeups of Mount Rushmore.

This image was captured with a 1.4X teleconverter attached to my 500mm lens--yielding an effective 700mm of focal length:

Washington profileWashington profile at Mount Rushmore National Memorial at 13000 SD-244 near Keystone, South Dakota on October 31, 2015 The amazing thing about this image is that it isn't cropped! This is straight out of the camera--with the exception of adding a touch of sharpening since I shoot RAW images that are soft (no sharpening applied in camera) until sharpened in post processing. Oh...and I did remove a small bolt like structure that was positioned on George Washington's head.

The blue sky was enhanced slightly by using a circular polarizing filter. I applied just a touch of polarization (by rotating the filter about a quarter of the way) since the clear sky was already quite blue. I find that too much polarization, especially with blue skies at higher elevations, will turn the sky almost black. It's an unnatural look.

I used two of my telephoto lenses, the 300mm and 500mm, to create a number of closeup pictures of the faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore--both individual and group portraits. Later, I used the 500mm extensively while visiting the Crazy Horse Memorial. I'll share more about my experience at Crazy Horse in a future blog entry.