COLORFUL COTTONWOODS


Cottonwoods at Lake Mc Conaughy, Nebraska

Traveling in autumn includes always the search for fall colors. I didn’t expect too much down in the desert areas we were heading to, but the cotton woods we saw during the trip surprised us several times. Most of them don’t become this pretty here in eastern Iowa. I waited until the wind slowed down during sunset at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska for a brief moment to capture the colors and shapes of the cottonwoods along the original lake shore.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200mm / f4,   @70 mm, 1/400 s, f/8, ISO400

EXPOSED TO THE WIND


Stormy Lake McConaughy, Nebraska

We just returned from a road trip that led us through eight states, with most of the time spent in New Mexico. This wonderful part of the country has many national and state parks, national monuments, forests, and wildlife refuges and we visited numerous of these places in the course of this trip. As I work through all the images during the next weeks, I will share some of the photos with you as always.

We started the trip into a heavy thunderstorm here in Iowa but that was the last rain we saw for the next eighteen days. Driven by very strong winds the storm clouds moved out as we drove across Nebraska. Finally our tent was pitched at Ogallala Lake in western Nebraska. This lake is separated from the much bigger Lake McConaughy by a dam, that gave us a little bit protection from the howling wind. Lake McConaughy is Nebraska’s largest reservoir on the North Platte River. Due to a very low water level much of the lake bottom was exposed to sun and wind. The drifting sand, touched by the light of the setting sun, made for an interesting, desert-like appearance.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200mm / f4,   @70 mm, 1/400 s, f/8, ISO200