Colorado landscapes: Aspen (no, not the city... ;-) )

 

Hey, I’m back. A busy travel schedule during the last couple weeks kept me away from any photography work. I still like to show you a few more photos from our trip to Colorado in September.

We were a little early for the peak of the autumn colors, the aspens just started turning yellow. But we kept our eyes open for locations with some color and good texture in the timber. As soon the light touches a scene like this you have your shot, a photo that tells the story of the changing season in the Rocky Mountains.

Another interesting subject for a nature photographer can be the tall and mostly straight stems of the aspens. Their light color in combination with a subtle light and a dark background always appealed to me. I like the graphic impact of the staggered arrangement and the rich texture of the bark and grass in the foreground.

While making the photo I already had a black and white image in mind. As always when it comes to black and white, the post processing was done with NIK Silver Efex Pro.

Colorado landscapes: A tipi in Ashcroft

 

Our next destination in Colorado was the area around Aspen. We camped in the valley below the famous Maroon Bells but I will talk about this later. Our first day was a rainy one and we made the whole morning a “maintenance day”, means taking a hot shower in Aspen and having a lovely restaurant lunch. The rain stopped and we drove up Castle Creek Valley, south of Aspen, to the remains of the ghost town Ashcroft. This old mining town started in 1880 but had only a short boom time. We explored the last wooden buildings of Ashcroft with our cameras but it wasn’t before we went back to the car that we saw this picturesque setting. I love how the elements come together, the steep slope of the mountain, the white stems of the aspen with their color changing leaves, the bushes in the foreground that surround the creek, and of course the tipi as an eye catcher…