Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Keystone, Colorado

We decided to stay close to home for spring break this year, just to save some money, and ended up in Keystone for a couple of days.  It turned out to be a great week to be there because it was the week after all the other major spring breaks and was very quiet.  Also, it snowed every day we were there and the skiing was great.  I didn’t expect it to feel so wintry and that was a nice surprise, so I took advantage of that and wandered out to take some pictures of the snow on the trees.  There is a great wetlands right at the base of Keystone Mountain, near the gondola, and I have taken many pictures there over the years.  Generally you don’t have to go far to get some wonderful pictures, you just have to have a different eye looking around all the time.  The picture I have included here was taken off the chairlift on my way up the mountain, I really like the perspective on the trees and the big bunch of pine cones prominent in the picture. 

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado

On my way up to Rocky Mountain National Park this afternoon I drove up the Big Thompson Canyon from Loveland and stopped to photograph the beautiful green lichen on the rock walls.  It was an overcast day and the lighting was perfect to enable me to capture incredible detail with my 39 megapixel PhaseOne back on my Hasselblad, the little image here on the web does not do this picture justice.  I just love the sheer rock walls with the pattern of fractures running across it, the dark rock contrasted to the almost day-glow yellow-green color of the lichen, it is an amazing site and I would recommend stopping by to see it on your way up to RMNP.

Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Finally got a chance to get up to Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, I’ve been meaning to do it since my great experience there last year.  This has been a busy year because of the trip to Antarctica and the exhibition, so I’ve been focused elsewhere.  I really wanted to get up to Dream Lake to take pictures of the incredible organic feeling texture of the ice on the lake, and this was a perfect day for that.  The weather was mostly overcast, so the grand landscape pictures were not very interesting and it gave me a chance to think about more intimate pictures.  Also, amazingly, the wind was not blowing so I could set up my tripod and not have it blow across the ice and shake around.  I was the only one up there and I wandered around looking at the different cracks in the ice and the air bubbles, it is really a very three dimensional phenomenon, hard to capture in two dimensions, but I think the pictures I came away with definitely do it justice.