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| Our Rig at Monument Valley |
In July/August 2011 we took a three week trip to Colorado, northern Arizona and southern Utah. In all, we hauled this trailer 8000 km. I pulled over to take this shot as we approached Monument Valley in Arizona.
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| The Million Dollar Highway |
To get there, we had to travel over some frightening passes in the Rockies of Colorado. Picture me driving the rig above, some 35 miles along the "Million Dollar Highway" in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado (shown above), in the outside lane. There is a monument near this highway in memorial to the 31 snow plow drivers who have died clearing snow from this road over the years. They can't keep guard rails along the cliff edge as the avalanches take them out over the winter. They say that when a vehicle goes over the cliff, the crash is so violent that the engines and transmissions are often ripped out of the vehicles and scatter the slopes below.
The image above shows the route we took across the States for this trip.
Our first touring stop was in beautiful Estes Park Colorado. Estes park lies inside Rocky Mountain National Park and contains spectacular mountain scenery. The following photos were taken there.
Peter and I hiked 3 miles up the very steep trail below to The Loch at 10,180 feet elevation in the pre-dawn darkness just in time to catch the last bit of alpenglow on the peaks. We hiked as fast as we could and jogged the last way since I had wasted time by taking a wrong turn driving to the trailhead .
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| Trail to The Loch |
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| The Loch, Rocky Mountain National park |
The above was a quick shot taken with no time to look around for a better vantage point with foreground interest. Minutes later the rich glow weakened considerably.
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| The Loch |
Peter and I waded into the icy water at the outlet of The Loch in an effort to catch some of the numerous Cuthroat Trout that were lazing around in the ponds. Since our goal was to go fishing, we succeeded. We fished. It's a good thing we didn't have catching fish as a goal because these trout see artificial flies pretty much every day of the summer and we only had some mild interest in our flies. It was exciting, however, to be standing just 3 or 4 feet away from these trout, equipped with a fly rod and flies, even though we didn't catch any. After standing still for nearly an hour in the icy water with an icy wind pummeling us from above in the pass, we took a break from the fishing to warm up and take the shot above and swore we would buy some warm waders for the next fishing trip.
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| Dream Lake |
Another morning I hiked up the Emerald lake trail before dawn to get this photo of Dream Lake. To get to this spot, I had to really scramble through a lot of tangled brush. The usual spot for shooting this scene had no foreground interest. As it was quite windy and I wanted to get a reflection of the peaks, I put on a 5 stop neutral density filter and polarizer to slow the shutter speed way down which blurred the waves enough to show the reflection. It's about my favourite shot from the trip.
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| Dream Lake |
Here's a landscape format version of Dream lake. Still using the neutral density filter and polarizer.
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| Nymph Lake |
After shooting a rather bland sunrise at Bear Lake, I hiked up to Emerald Lake and stopped to take this picture at Nymph Lake along the way.
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| Nymph Lake |
I kicked off my sandals and waded carefully through the plants to set up my tripod to catch this shot (to avoid damaging the plants). I liked the reflections and foreground interest offered by the flowers. But boy, do you lose impact on the peaks if you miss the sunrise and the associated alpenglow!
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| The Stanley Hotel |
Stephen King's inspiration for the 70's horror flick, "The Shining", the Stanley Hotel looks down over the village of Estes park. I took this shot in the early evening as a blend of 3 shots HDR, 1 stop apart.
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| On the Way to Emerald lake |
Along the trail to Emerald Lake, I passed this nice stream. I used HDR to capture the broad exposure range here.
Three days later, after losing 6 or 7 hours buying a new trailer hitch in Grand Junction, Colorado, we found our reserved campsite in Marble CO at 12:30 pm. The time lost replacing the hitch caused me to miss the opportunity to shoot the Crystal Mill at sunset, but I managed to push my bicycle up the 5 miles of jeep track in the dark in time to shoot sunrise at the historic mill. (I opted not to drive our jeep up the road due to the dangerous cliffs along the trail, underscored by the jeep wreckage at the bottom of the cliff).
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| Crystal Mill Trail Near the Jeep Wreckage |
The early morning light wasn't very exciting at sunrise, so my best photos were taken after the sun began to reach down into the gorge to the mill.
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| Crystal Mill Sunrise Panorama |
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| Crystal Mill |
The panorama below consisted of some 54 photos and HDR.
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| Crystal Mill Panorama |
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| Crystal River Hot Springs |
Later the same day, we found the Crystal River Hot Springs, running into the river from the right. The Crystal River is still ice cold at this point and Peter enjoyed soaking in the little pool with cold water on his right and scalding hot water on his left.
The next day found us camping at Difficult Creek, outside Aspen, Colorado. The campground had this beautiful creek running through it and Peter and I spent many hours bathing artificial flies in the water. Again, the many trout who were rising here, before our very eyes, seemed to be well acquainted and very suspicious of these tied flies, so we only got a couple of bites. The fishing was still one of our most memorable activities of the trip, however. This was the quintessential trout stream but being right in a popular campground, we didn't catch any.
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| Peter Fishing Difficult Creek, Aspen Co |
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| Mount Sopris Panorama, Snowmass Wilderness |
The panorama above was shot with the tripod positioned on the roof of my jeep.
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| Maroon Lake/Maroon Bells, Colorado |
The next morning, I took some shots at Maroon lake during the sunrise. I managed to capture the wide exposure range of this scene using HDR.
A three mile hike up into the ranges the following morning with Kathie and Peter took us to the edge of Crater Lake at the very base of the Maroon Bells. I thought it was only a one mile hike, so again I had to run down to the lake, dropping my coat and gear along the path in an effort not to miss the earliest alpenglow on the peaks. Here are the resulting images:
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| Crater Lake Panorama |
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| Crater Lake |
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| Pass at Maroon Bells Wilderness |
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| Hiking to Crater Lake |
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| Colorado Columbines |
Hiking back to the parking lot from Crater Lake, I captured these photos of columbines.
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| Columbines |
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| Steam Engine at Silverton Colorado |
After leaving Aspen we had to negotiate the treacherous Million Dollar Highway to reach our next stay, Silverton, Colorado. Silverton is situated at 9000 feet and has changed very little since the 19th century.
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| The Mittens, Monument Valley, AZ |
Our next stop after Colorado was Monument Valley, Arizona. Getting up early afforded me some lovely sunrises. The photo above is a combination of 3 bracketed shots using HDR.
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| Totem Pole Reflection |
I got my camera muddy taking this photo but one doesn't find many opportunities for reflections in a desert.
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| Posing Cowhand at Monument Valley |
This shot was very far off and I had to change lenses quickly to catch it. I actually missed the moment as the rider had turned around and was riding away from the cliff edge when I finally got the shot. A couple of minutes in Photoshop got him turned around again for me.
The above two shots are more for interest's sake as they are quite poor technically.
After about a 6 hour drive from Monument Valley, we arrived at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We had some rain while we were there and the sunrise didn't transpire.
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| Kathie and Peter at the North Rim |
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| The North Rim |
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| Mesa Arch Sunrise |
Getting this shot of Mesa Arch was one of my main goals of the trip. It is located about 30 miles outside of Moab, Utah in Canyonlands National Park. I had read that photographers compete for the ideal spot to place one's tripod to get the best angle on the scene and to include the Washerwoman rock formation in the valley below so I planned my arrival for 30 minutes earlier than I expected other keen photographers to get there. So after getting up around 3:30 AM, driving for 40 minutes or so, I arrived at the parking lot. There was already two other vehicles sitting there with people waiting to hike in. I managed to hike the 10 minutes in to the arch and set up on the spot I had determined the evening before and waited. The other photographers were close behind me. As the sun rose, I began shooting HDRs, panoramas, and switching between 8mm fisheye, 17 mm, and 18-55mm lenses hoping that at least one of the sets of photos would be really nice. From 5:40 AM to 7:50 AM, I shot 410 frames amounting to 9 GB of card space. There were about 10 or so other photographers there shooting away as well, with the sound of rapid fire shutters clicking non stop for most of that time. I was surprised to see mosquitoes show up and when backlit by the sun, they appeared in and spoiled a lot of shots.
Weeks later after pouring through all of my frames, combining the panoramas and processing the HDRs, I finally found the set of shots making up the image above. It is a nine shot panorama (shot in portrait mode) with 3 bracketed exposures for each of the nine positions, totaling 27 shots in all. It printed off beautifully at 36" by 13". I plan to print it at least twice as large soon. All of the combined shots resulted in a high pixel count and will allow me to print it really large with no evidence of interpolation.
It wasn't until January before I had successfully identified this as the best shot and combined it into the panorama and processed the HDR. One set of 3 of the shots had a crooked horizon which Photoshop couldn't process for the panorama, so I had to crop and straighten them, then crop all of the other photos to the same dimensions before running the panorama merge in PS. When it finally came together I was very happy!
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| Too Windy |
Stopping at Chicago, the Windy City, on the way home, I had trouble setting up my umbrella over the tripod, so I skipped shooting the shores of Lake Michigan, this time. ;^)
