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Lost Lake, Kebler Pass, Colorado

2008-10-08T18:10:00Z

Click here to hear an audio report from the field.

On the last stop of the Fall Colors 2008 Tour, I just couldn’t stay away from Kebler Pass, it’s like an old friend or coming home. I must admit that I was a little worried driving in last night that I was too late as at least half of the leaves have already dropped. So my tactic was to camp at the Lost Lake campground and hike the Three Lakes trail for sunrise. This is a trail that I hiked way back on my very first Fall Colors tour in 2005 and where I got the popular “Lost Lake Mist” image. I decided that I wanted to revisit these places as I am much further up the technical learning curve now and perhaps I could get some better images.

As I set out this morning the snow on Mt. Beckwith was glowing brightly and the reflection of Mt. Beckwith on the glass-smooth Lost Lake Slough was perfect, but I pressed on for Lost Lake itself. The night was cool and there was lots of frost on the ground and not a cloud in the sky, so I knew that there would be little color in the sunrise and that my strategy looked good. I got up to Lost Lake, huffing and puffing after a couple of hundred foot climb, and unfortunately there wasn’t any mist rising off the lake and the scene was unremarkable. I did take some pictures, since I was there, and then pressed on for the falls feeding into the lake. The waterfalls were ringed with ice and some of the green moss peeked through the rushing water and I stopped down my lens to get as long an exposure as possible in order to blur the water. I am really hopeful that picture turns out.

I then moved on down the trail to Dollar Lake, which was nice but did not really excite me for a picture, but then I followed a little side trail and came upon a sweeping overlook of the entire Kebler Pass valley with the dike and Ruby Peak in the background. The light was very harsh and from the side and a lot of the Aspen trees are bare, not really a good time for a picture there, but definitely a good spot for late afternoon or evening when the Aspen are peaking.

I figured I was done and started on the trail down the ridgeline back to the campground and was stunned as I came upon scene after scene that I wanted to capture. The trail was still not in direct sunlight yet and the warm glow lit up the millions of aspen leaves carpeting the trail and forest floor and each scene looked more inviting than the last. As I was taking the picture above I was yelled at by a protective chipmunk and I could swear that he was throwing stuff down on me. The wonderful grandeur and beauty made me want to keep moving down the trail to see what was around the next corner, but at the same time I didn’t want it to end, because I know that from here I will start my journey back to Denver and civilization. I wish that I could bring all of you out here to experience these wonderful moments that happen to me, and I think that my pictures capture part of that. Kebler Pass is still my all-time favorite place to view aspen in Colorado.

Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge

2008-10-07T22:16:00Z

Click here to hear an audio report from the field.

Chanced by these Sandhill Cranes on their migration through Colorado, they are absolutely majestic birds and it was fun to hear them talking to each other as I looked on. Click on the Audio Report above to hear them.

La Manga Pass, Colorado

2008-10-06T17:04:01Z

Decided to travel down to far southern Colorado to try something new and am I happy that I did. I have driven over La Manga pass countless times on the way to our place down in Regina, New Mexico, but I always had the family in tow and never took the chance to photograph it. I did a speed run down from Denver and stopped by the Forest Service office in La Jara and formulated a plan to shoot on La Manga and then try to spend the night at a campground up the Conejos River Valley. I started on the far south side of the pass, right on the border wth New Mexico, and slowly worked my way back. By the time the sun was going down I set up at the top of a road cut overlooking the Conejos River Valley shown above. The color developed slowly and in a subtle way but I was able to capture a little of the aspens in the valley itself. If you look closely at the picture the shadow areas have been enhanced and are pretty noisy, but I think it works. I would lighten the valley up some more but there’s just not enough information there. It was a gorgeous sunset and on my way down I did some time exposures of the golden glow on some aspen trees, it was practically dark but I just couldn’t stop taking pictures. I love days like this!

Kenosha Pass, Colorado

2008-10-03T16:56:02Z

The Tour continues and I spent last night on Kenosha Pass and I have to tell you this is really a hidden jewel in Colorado and just 65 miles from Denver. Most people just zoom by on their way to South Park, or perhaps visit the rather overused bathrooms at the campground on the east side, but if you go just a couple of hundred yards beyond that it is a whole different world. First of all, it is dispersed camping so you don’t have to pay for it and there are a bunch of spots scattered around the meadows and aspen groves. I imagine that during the weekends and summer it is busier, but I had the place to myself on this weeknight. When I was shooting the sunset I noticed an elk bugling in the woods across the valley and he was still at it at 5:00 this morning. I wandered around the meadows and aspen groves this morning, watching to see whether the sunrise was going to give me any color. In the end a large cloud just above me was lit up and reflected a beautiful soft light onto the groves of Aspen trees. I started to wander to the east and discovered the valley pictured above heading off to the north towards what I believe is Guanella Pass and Mt. Evans. The glowing Aspen trees and the more subtle browns of the grasses and bushes contrast nicely with the blue sky peeking through the wispy clouds. On the way back I cut off the valley and found a grove of old-growth aspens that must have been 2 feet in diameter, very stately looking in contrast to the younger trees. Kenosha Pass is definitely a rival in my mind to Kebler Pass, my all time favorite place for aspen trees.

Spring Creek Road, above Green Mountain Reservoir, Colorado

2008-10-02T16:29:00Z

This is the first entry of the Journey Through Landscape Fall Colors Tour 2008, or JTLFCT08 for short. Got a late start out of Denver last night and drove in under cover of darkness, so I was uncertain to what I would find when the sun came up. I parked on a short spur road off the main Forest Service road where it looked like there were some aspen trees. I started walking down the road in the dark with the glow on the horizon lighting my path. There were aspens on both sides of the road in full bloom, some almost a beautiful golden red color, and the road ended about half a mile down with a sweeping vista overlooking Green Mountain reservoir Ute Pass. Just at the end of the road there were the two aspen trees pictured above, reaching up into the sky above the aspen grove, catching the wonderful golden glow of the sunrise. I don’t want to sound too cliche, but the beautiful light of the morning and the solitude of the aspen grove really made it a magical morning for me, a great start to the Tour.

Click here to hear an audio report from the field.

Zion National Park, Utah

2008-09-01T00:24:00Z

At the last minute I decided to join Stephen Johnson for a workshop at Zion National Park and drove out on Friday. There were four of us besides Steve and we spent three days wandering around taking pictures at various spots in the park and it was a wonderful time. Even though I have taken workshops with Steve before it is always good to hear the concepts again as I always learn something new. It is also good to have a refresher course on composition, I don’t care who you are. My big thing to take away this time was to simplify my compositions to only include what is absolutely necessary in the photograph. I mostly try to follow this rule but sometimes wander away from that with some of my compositions.

On the first day we drove out to the east entrance to the park stopping at many places along the way. The above image was taken at checkerboard mesa, named that for obvious reasons. It had rained a little earlier in the day and this helped knock the haze down a little bit and you can see the clearing clouds. We had to fight our way through a couple of buses of Japanese tourists at the parking lot but quickly left them behind by actually walking the quarter mile to the mesa. It is amazing how easy it is to avoid people at these parks by actually walking away from the parking lot. It was nice to get to the mesa and enjoy the sounds around us of the wind rustling through the trees and the light of the approaching sunset.

We also spent an afternoon wandering up the road to the mesas above the park to the west and it was incredible how diverse the landscape was and how few people there were. We went from desert at the start of the road to pine and aspen forest at the end, I am really glad that we had that excursion. Zion is a wonderful park and one could spend a week there to really see everything.

Invesco Field at Mile High, Denver, Colorado

2008-08-28T22:22:01Z

It doesn’t matter who you support, I couldn’t pass up the chance to attend Obama’s historic acceptance speech or to take my 12 year old daughter to see this event. Actually, it was an amazing event but also an ordeal to attend, I took the afternoon off to get through security but it only took 45 minutes so I had a lot of time on my hands. Luckily the program started at 4:00 and there were lots of speeches by just about everyone in the Democratic party. The place really started filling up around 6:00 and the program got more interesting with Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, and a really awesome performance of Yes We Can by wil. i. am. Before Obama came out Al Gore came out to talk and that was really an unexpected surprise for me, really a highlight of the evening. The place was pretty packed when Obama came out and everyone on the upper level with us stomped on the metal decking in excitement. The speech was incredible and it was just amazing being there to see it. As you can see from the picture, we didn’t have very good seats but it did provide us with a bird’s eye view of the event. You can’t really tell from the picture, but our section was really very ethnically mixed and there was tremendous excitement and enthusiasm for Obama. I’m glad my daughter Maggie got to attend, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. After the festivities it took us about an hour and a half to get out of the stadium and find our way home, the crowd just completely overwhelmed the public transit system, but it was definitely worth the effort.

Sylvan Lake, Colorado

2008-08-25T00:14:00Z

We had a fun weekend up camping with some friends of ours at Sylvan Lake State Park near Eagle, Colorado. This was my first experience camping in a State Park and it was eye opening as to how noisy it can be as the campground was full. The first night someone drove around the campground at 2:30 am, and then someone else with a loud muffler at 6:30 am. And people stay up all hours also, at least until 11:00. What I didn’t understand were the trailers with their generators and satellite dishes, why even go camping at all? Our friends were staying in the yurts which were in a secluded aspen grove a couple of miles away.

Despite the campground we had a lovely time. Sylvan lake itself is a couple of acres and there is a mile or so loop around the whole thing. We ambled around it on Saturday with both families and then I woke up early on Sunday and spent an hour or two taking pictures. There was a lovely wetland around the river leading into the lake and I spent a lot of time wandering around getting pictures of the meandering stream and the tall grasses and flowers. The sky was clear and in the background I could hear birds chirping over the noise of the stream rushing over the rocks. There were two men out fishing on the pond but I was the only one on the path and had some peace and quiet for a little while before returning to the campground for some breakfast. As I was walking back some small clouds had formed above the lake and the reflection provided me the perfect composition seen above.

Besides the crowds it was a lovely place and I would definitely recommend staying in the yurts and visiting the lake.

Maroon Bells, Colorado

2008-07-23T15:34:00Z

Elizabeth and I got up at 4:45 this morning to get up to Maroon Bells for the sunrise and believe it or not we were not the first car there when we pulled in at 5:30. I got set up on the lake in good time to catch the little bit of color that appeared about 6, by that time there were about 15 of us taking pictures. It was a beautiful still morning and Maroon Bells reflected perfectly off the glassy smooth lake. Also the reflection of the pine trees and rocks off the water caught my attention, the gradation of the greenish yellow colors was so vivid. Eventually a breeze picked up and blew the reflection away, so I started wandering around the meadow shooting pictures of the various flowers with Maroon Bells in the background. As I got to the top of the meadow I took the above picture of the whole scene, a composite of 5 separate frames that I couldn’t have shot in a single frame. I think it nicely captures the overview of the whole area.

It has been great having the opportunity to take so many pictures over the last few weeks, I’m off to Europe now and it may be a few weeks before I get another post on here.

Snowmass, Colorado

2008-07-23T03:10:00Z

Decided to walk down the Canal Trail in Snowmass today, I’ve had some success there in the past, mostly in the winter so I wanted to try it in the summer. It was a beautiful morning, perfect for wandering along the trail. It crosses the Campground ski trail and as I walked across I noticed a whole field of Columbines, a veritable goldmine compared to yesterday. The trail meanders on along towards the peak at the headwaters of Snowmass Creek, it is either Snowmass Peak or Hayden Peak. There are groves and groves of Aspen trees and the tall white flowers in grottos nestled at their feet. It took me over two hours to wander out and back taking pictures of just about everything. As I came back across the ski runs I spent some time taking pictures of the various wildflowers, it was incredible. Some clouds had come up so the light was low and the slight breeze made it difficult to shoot the flowers, but I think I got something decent. I took the above picture on my way back through one of the grottos. When I got back to the parking lot I wandered up the ski trail where there was a large field of wildflowers, what a great morning. I finally had to put my camera away, my head was so tired from all the picture taking, a great problem to have.

Ashcroft, Colorado

2008-07-21T16:57:00Z

I’m up in the Aspen area this week for my daughter’s summer camp and no visit to Aspen would be complete without wandering up to Ashcroft, winter or summer. And I’m glad I did visit. I had Elizabeth drop me off at the Pine Creek Cook house and I wound my way back to Ashcroft through fields of wildflowers. The picture here does not do the scene justice since the web pictures really squash the reds. It was a thunderstormy afternoon and I spent a couple of hours listening to the occasional thunder clap as I photographed the fields and the Aspens, what a great couple of hours. Eventually I got tired of the flowers and started shooting some Aspen trees when I noticed a group of Columbines nestled in some bushes in an Aspen grove. You’ll just have to wait to see those pictures. Luckily it just started raining on me when Elizabeth arrived back to pick me up, so I didn’t even get wet!

South of Agate, Colorado

2008-07-14T00:58:01Z

Out taking pictures of Eastern Colorado for my series Forgotten Land, drove out highway 86 east from Castle Rock through Elizabeth and Kiowa eventually reaching Limon. Pulled off on a side road about 20 miles shy of I-70 because the sun was setting and I figured I should find something to shoot. Stumbled across an old cow shed across from a plowed field with grooves that caught my eye. It was such a transposition getting out of the car into a completely different world almost. The wind was blowing along pretty good, which was nice because it cooled me off and I love the sound that it makes as it whistles through things around you. After I spent some time getting pictures of the plowed field I stepped through the fence on the west side of the road and started to explore the situation over there. It looked almost like there was a house there at some point with only the foundation and the various out-buildings still left. There was lots of junk on the ground, fence posts, old signs, a Colorado license plate from 1957. The wind was whistling through all of the buildings and the leaves in the nearby trees as the sky turned an incredible shade of pink and red, was a gorgeous sunset. A couple of cars did go by early on but for half an hour I felt like the only person around with a horizon to horizon 360 degree view of the subtle grass covered rolling hills. I know I just left the unwashed masses in Denver but this place made me feel so alive and giddy, it was a great feeling and the reason that I come out to Eastern Colorado. It’s hard to explain, but the vastness of the plains is incredible.

I drove on down the road and finally just made a spot to pull my camper over for the night. Officially I am in the right of way for the public road, but I’m not sure if it is legal to park on the side of the road overnight. I know that someone must own the land I am parked by, but there is not a house in sight for several miles. I’ll stay here until someone tells me I can’t be here. I am sitting here typing on the computer with the side door to the camper open, the wind is still blowing along and the gusts come in and cool me off, the moonlight reflecting off the fence next to the van. I just love the solitude out here and the feeling of nature all around you, what a wonderful place.

Regina, New Mexico

2008-07-06T01:07:00Z

We actually got away from Denver for a short week’s trip to our place in Regina, the spa as I call it. Had a wonderful time eating fabulous New Mexican food at Hazel’s, riding my bicycle, and swimming in the swimming hole. The weather was mostly cloudy so the sunsets were disappointing, although there were a couple of nice ones like this.

South Park, Colorado

2008-06-28T01:02:00Z

I noticed that I didn’t have any appointments on my calendar for today so I decided to drive up to South Park and explore for some pictures. After a stop at the Ranger Station in Fairplay I headed down Highway 9 to the Tomahawk State Wildlife Area on the South Platte River. This was the first place I took pictures as I was deciding to take up photography full time and I wanted to revisit it with my new techniques to get better pictures. Luckily mother nature was on my side and provided some nice puffy clouds, not quite as dramatic and the ones before but still very nice. The parking area is located on the side of a ridge overlooking a lush green vallley, where people mostly fish, with another higher ridge across the river. Beyond that is a wonderful vista off to the southwest of a broad valley with cows dotted here and there and a bright red barn all in front of some foothills to the west of Pikes Peak. I was mobbed by mosquitos as I got out of the car, a testament to the wet conditions in the valley. I wandered down the ridge to find just the right relationship between foreground and background and took many pictures. Hopefully something will turn out.

I continued on down the South Platte to Eleven Mile reservoir, hoping to find a nice place to camp, but all I found was people and I wanted to move on to something more remote. So, I head back to the north and drove along the east side of South Park along some rolling hills. I was amazed to find tons of houses along the hills and couldn’t really find anything to shoot. Eventually as I got up towards Como I found a nice vista over a shallow valley with the sun setting over Boreas Pass. Once it got dark I found a parking area on the side of the road just east of Como where I shut it down for the night and watched the stars come out as I ate dinner. It sure is great having a camper to take out shooting pictures.

Shrine Pass, Colorado

2008-03-13T17:32:00Z

It was time for the 2nd Annual Exeter Shrine Pass Expedition and we had a fabulous trip again this year. The weather was sunny as we left the parking lot off of Vail Pass, but it was quickly evident from the darkening sky that the weather was changing. About half an hour into the hike up the trail it started to snow, luckily not very hard and the six of us made great time up to Walter’s Cabin. We unpacked and had a little lunch and then went out for the trek up to the Shrine Pass ridge just above the cabin, probably less than a mile hike on up. There was a lot of fresh snow and we were very cautious about avalanche potential as we reached the steeper slopes near the ridge. Unfortunately we only had two avalanche transmitters, so we took turn crossing a couple of slopes and threw the receivers back to those waiting below. As we got to the ridge there was a huge cornice that looked like it was going to be difficult to ascend. My new randonee boots were a little small for me and unfortunately my toes were starting to become very painful, do I decided not to go the last 50 yards on up to the ridge. Since it was snowing steadily the view from the ridge was not as spectacular as it usually is, so I figured I wasn’t missing much as I waited for the other to hike on up and back.

On the way back down to the cabin I took this picture of the snow piles on the colorful tree trunks, a beautiful site that was repeated many times around us.