Colorado landscapes: Last call ;-)

 

We did not see the peak of the fall colors in the Rocky Mountains during the first half of the month but with every day during our journey in September we saw the winter coming closer. The first snow on the summits, and finally on our little tent, left no doubt about that winter approaches earlier in the higher altitudes than here in Iowa. Colorado is a very pretty state and I’m certain you can’t go wrong at any time of the year to create some photos or just enjoy the wonderful nature there.

I like to conclude my little photo series about landscape and wildlife in southern and central Colorado with today’s images. I hope you enjoyed it and if someone picked up a tip or two about how to shoot and where to shoot, I will be more than happy. :-) Thank you to all of you, especially my friends on Facebook, who always encouraged me to keep going and publishing a new blog post during the last two months. I really appreciate your support.

Colorado landscapes: Maroon Bells

 

One of the most photographed locations in the Rocky Mountains is the view across Maroon Lake to the peaks of the Maroon Bells. And if the sky is blue and a few clouds are in the air you can’t go wrong with this picture. It is a simple click, even with the camera in your phone. If after a day of rain in the valleys the first snow of the season has fallen at higher altitudes and the aspens start turning yellow, you even have a bonus for your image. The wind made a few ripples on the surface of the lake but that didn’t bother me a bit while making this photo. We hiked up to Crater Lake, just below the Maroon Bells, after this photo opportunity. The air was really clear after the rain in the morning, but it got a lot hazier and I didn’t like any of my shots I made up at Crater Lake later in the day…

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: Maroon Creek

 

It is sometimes easy to get carried away by the great views the Rocky Mountains have to offer. Nevertheless it is always worth to have the eyes on the ground and search for the smaller spots that can make for a good photo. This is in particular true when clouds hide the “classic views” most people are looking for. Maroon Creek, just below Maroon Lake, has a lot of interesting places that are often ignored by visitors but that are just great during these days with heavy overcast.

I learned over time to approach scenes like this with some deliberation and some time at hands. In the past I have rushed through quite often in similar situations and later at home, in front of the computer, much time was spent to correct the perspective by cropping the image and by removing unwanted branches and sticks that stuck into the frame from all sides. Don’t take me wrong, I still do small cosmetic corrections on my landscape photos, like “border police” around the edges, but I reach my goal to do it right in camera a lot more often with this slower approach.

Colorado landscapes: Maroon Lake - after the rain

 

Back to the Colorado stories. I read somewhere that Maroon Bells are the most photographed mountains in the US. I have no idea if this is true or not, but they are definitely worth a look or two, even if the sky is not blue and the fall colors of the leaves just start turning.

As you probably have figured out I’m not so much a fan of the “postcard views” and rather make photos that use subtle light and clouds to tell a story. The purists under the landscape photographers may also not like that the water of Maroon Lake has some ripples but for me this is part of the story telling. Everybody who has been more than a couple times in alpine mountains knows by looking at this photo that there is some dynamic up in the sky, that the clouds moved fast, and that some wind played a role in this game. Yep, the editor who has to select the next postcard for print will refuse this photo, but have you seen many postcards that tell stories beyond a great vista? …. ;-)

Autumn in Wisconsin

 

The forecast for the weekend promised warm and dry weather, so we decided to pack the tent, throw the kayaks on top of the car, and go camping in Gov. Dodge State Park over in Wisconsin. The majority of the leaves is on the ground but little patches of yellow, red, and orange are still part of the landscape here in the Midwest.

Saturday morning thick fog covered Twin Lake Valley below the campground and every valley around. Pretty soon the fog lifted and left us with a clear blue sky for the rest of the day and into Sunday morning.

The water is a little chilly already but who says you have to go swimming? Joan and I paddled both days and as you can see our little dog Cooper didn’t mind it either. One of the reasons we like this state park so much is the variety of activities you can enjoy in and around this area. After yesterday’s paddle tour we went on a hike for a few hours and visited some old spring houses, Stevens Falls, and the Stevens homestead, the old farm of this pioneering family. Their life is described and documented on interpretive signs along a trail. Why do I mention this? Some of the photographs displayed on signs were made by a family member way back in the old days. Although none of the farm buildings exists anymore, except for the foundations, the photos of the old farm give us today, over 100 years later, a pretty good impression how this farm has grown and supported the life of this family. Photography at work! ;-)

Bare trees are hardly photogenic but if the light hits them just right, you can still make a photo that may have an impact on the viewer and tells the story about autumn. I tried this minutes before sunset and from the same location, a rocky bluff above the valley, as during the fog in the morning. The white stems of the trees stand out and even if the eye goes to the long shadows of the shrubs in the foreground for a few seconds, it will go back to the sunlit bare trees.

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…

Colorado landscapes: Black Canyon - storm clouds and rainbow

 

It is hard to believe that the first photo has been made forty minutes before the second one. A storm front moved out of the area at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison the second night we stayed there. What first looked like an early sunset was just a brief episode in the constant change of light. Looking down the canyon from one of the view points along the south rim and watching the development of the weather was as exciting as watching a movie.  "Killer light" at its best, with the bonus of a rainbow... :-)

Colorado landscapes: Black Canyon - dealing with an overcast

 

My first photo gives you an idea how we saw the Black Canyon of the Gunnison the day after the shots in my last blog post were made. There is nothing exciting about this photo, except maybe for the location itself, but the light is just not very flattering. There wasn’t really a need to make photos that I wouldn’t use anyway here in the blog, in a book, or most important as a large print on the wall. However, I still make these clicks for my own documentation and memory. I want to be able to remember locations and shooting angles in order to be better prepared if I go to the same place another time.

The landscape on the rim of the canyon is desert-like and fresh colors are not there in abundance during an overcast, as easily seen in the first photo. There is much more to the canyon than just the rocks and looking out for other subjects is important on a day like this. The south rim of the canyon is at an altitude of about 2500 m (~8,300 ft) and fall comes early. The first leaves started turning yellow already in the first half of September during our visit and pointing the lens into this gully lead to the photo above.

Painted Wall, the highest cliff in Colorado, with its patterns is probably the most iconic view of Black Canyon National Park. These patterns were created more than a billion years ago when molten rock was intruded into fractures and joints in the existing rock, then cooled and hardened. I made several clicks and because of the gray overcast I was thinking black & white for a final image. Everything changed all at once when the sky broke and the sun sent its rays through the layer of clouds to the bottom of the canyon. Suddenly the gigantic rock wall revealed its beauty and told the story why people called it “Painted Wall” much better.

East Portal Road leads to the bottom of the Black Canyon, down to the Gunnison Diversion Dam. A tunnel through the rocks from there to the Uncompahgre Valley delivers water for irrigation since 1909. The water of the Gunnison River at the dam is more quiet and after spending hours up on the dry rim it was a pleasure to see green and yellow reflecting in the cool water...

Colorado landscapes: Black Canyon of the Gunnison

 

I introduce our next destination in Colorado with some lines that I found in the National Park brochure.

“Some are longer, some are deeper, some are narrower, and a few have walls as steep, but no other canyon in North America combines the depth, narrowness, sheerness, and somber countenance of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison”,     Wallace Hansen, Geologist

It is indeed an awesome canyon, carved by the Gunnison River. The river loses more elevation within the 48 miles of the Black Canyon than the 1,500-mile Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans.  The gorge is over 800 meters deep and very little sunlight reaches the bottom. The only things that give a sense of scale in my first image are the border stones of the view point on the other side of the canyon, which are about a kilometer away (5/8 of a mile).

Yes, someone may find a little light in every little crack in these rocks by employing multiple exposures and merging them to a High Dynamic Range photo. I personally prefer to expose strictly for the highlights and use the shadows as an element in the composition of my photo. But that is just me…:-)   The setting sun reveals the structure of these step walls and I consider us very lucky to have such great light the first evening after our arrival in the National Park. More to come...