Snowy evening at Beaver Brook trail

Beaver Brook trail is a nice little trail that leaves from Windy Saddle on the road up Lookout Mountain near Golden. I strolled a bit here with my camera last night and shot this fully immersive panorama that you can look all around in and really see what it is like to be here at sunset. Enjoy! See it really large by following the link to Google Maps.
Screenshot to have a thumbnail on social media shares:

An outerworldly glow

Panorama assembled from 25 images (3 rows of 5). Individual shots using D300, Nikkor 35 mm f/1.8 DX at f/8.0, 1/40s, ISO 200.
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Flickr image. Google+ post.

Sunset from a popular pullout along the road up to the top of Lookout Mountain and Buffalo Bill's grave. I had these lying around but never did much with them but decided to stitch them. The stitched image is 100 MP but that is only about half of the available resolution. The colors were really this strange at the time. You can see downtown Golden in the middle, the two table mountains, the buildings of the School of Mines, the Coors factory (between the two mesas) and the skyscrapers of downtown Denver towards the rightmost tree (probably not in the copies for the web though). Several years ago I shot a very similar dusk panorama on one of the very coldest evenings of the year that this should be compared to:



I wrote about that specific outing at the time as an example of how inspiring such outings into crazy weather can be. Surprisingly it is still online!

Sunrise at Mount Galbraith

Mount Galbraith is a basically unknown open space park just west of Golden. It's accessed right off Golden Gate Canyon road. The morning these images were created last weekend, I was originally planning to go up in the mountains, but a combination of factors made me rethink that. The extremely high avalanche danger made me a little apprehensive about the location I had chosen and the roads leading there were extremely slick after the big Friday snow storm. So I chose to stay in a little longer and drive up to Mount Galbraith where I had taken some nice cloudy sunset images before (see here, here, and here) and where I had discovered a very nice tree that overlooked Golden, Denver and the plains that for sure would be offer some nice opportunities at sunrise. It's rare to need snowshoes in the foothills, but this day I needed them.


Sunrise over the plains. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 16 images.
Individual shot technical data: Nikon D300, Nikkor 35 mm f1.8 DX, f/13, 1/125s, ISO 200
Same image on flickr. Same on Google+.

This is the tree and down below you can see Golden and North Table Mountain. You should really check it out large by clicking on it.

I also made a panorama at this same spot:


Wideness. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 10 images.
Individual shots: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11 mm, f/13, 1/100s, ISO 200

Again, seeing this large is the only way.

This is the tree from the other, sunlit side.


Glowing. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 8 images.
Individual shot technical data: Nikon D300, Nikkor 35 mm f1.8 DX, f/13, 1/60s, ISO 200

I saw a lot of deer from which I will post some pictures later. Now I focus just on the landscapes.

This image was taken on the other side of Mount Galbraith long after the sun had come up but the shadows were still very very cool.


Hot and Cold. Buy a print.
Technical data: Single shot Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 15 mm, f/10, 1/200s, ISO 200
Google+ post. Same image on flickr.

The hills you see in the back are I think those in White Ranch open space park and Golden Gate Canyon state park. I really like the very strong hot/cold contrast you get here between the shadows and the sunlit areas. This is really what it looked like to me. I lifted the shadows out of the darkness by using a graduated neutral density filter but to your eyes the shadows looked this crazy blue in contrast with the warm, sunlit areas.

On the back of Mount Galbraith there is also a large area of burnt trees from an area that burned last spring. These offer some interesting opportunities but are hard to frame effectively.

Dance of the skeletons. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 8 images.
Individual shots: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11 mm, f/11, 1/80s, ISO 200

Hope you enjoyed these as much as I enjoyed my morning that time.

More from Mount Galbraith

Mount Galbraith Golden Vista. Buy a print.
Assembled from 7 handheld images Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11 mm, f/11, 1/160s, ISO 200

This is the same tree as I showed a few weeks ago. It's a nice vantage point overlooking Golden and Denver as you can see and I thought it would make a nice panorama. You should really see it large which you can by clicking on the image above. I stitched it together using the outstanding (and free) hugin software. The individual images were developed in Lightroom 4 beta and I did a little post in Lightroom 4 beta too.

Kayakers on Clear Creek in Golden

Last Tuesday I went to shoot some pictures of the Kayakers that are stunting on Golden's Clear Creek most of the summer. These people are fun to watch. I've tried Kayaking before but was constantly bailing out because contrary to quiet water, I could rarely get myself upright again after flipping in even slightly more rapid stuff. Fun, but cold sport. I shot all in jpeg on my D300 and as always focus and exposure were basically perfect everytime. Quite amazing. This is just a tiny subselection of the images I shot:











There are far more images on the smugmug gallery. See the whole set here as a slideshow on smugmug.
If you're a flickerite, a subset is found on my flickr pages here.