Friday, June 27, 2008

South Park, Colorado

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.