The river bend

I am going through a lot of old images that I didn't fully appreciated before. This one is of a bend in the Virgin river in the Wall Street area of the Zion National Park Narrows.

Around the bend. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
High resolution composite stitched from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 1.3s, ISO 200. I made several versions of this image, several of which are in the Zion gallery on my smugmug site.

Narrows reflection

I recently found this image from the Narrows in Zion National Park while going through my Lightroom library. The image is a composite of 9 images to create a very high resolution image and I hadn't noticed while shooting it that I had blown out (i.e. it was overexposed outside of the range of the camera's sensor) the cliff in the back. At the time, Lightroom wasn't able to bring these back to anything resembling nice color so I never bothered stitching the images. However the latest Lightroom versions are far better at this and surprisingly by just dialing back the exposure slider a little on the individual raw files, suddenly a blue sky showed up and detail in the rock appeared. So after some stitching and editing (mostly some dodging and burning) the image below was created that I am very happy with.

Narrow reflection. Buy a print. Image on flickr. Image on facebook. On Google+
High resolution composite from 9 images from Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 200.

Fall Drama in Glacier Gorge

Glacier Gorge Fall Drama. Buy a print. Image on flickr. Facebook.
Nikon D300. Nikkor 18-200 mm at 18mm, 1/250s, f/8, ISO 200.

Mills Lake sunset

I went to catch the sunset at Mills Lake with my daughter a few weeks ago. Haven't had time since then to post the pictures here.

Sunset at Mills Lake. Buy a print. Also see this image on flickr. Facebook.
High resolution composite from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 32mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 200

Mills Lake horizontal. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 32mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 200

More later.

More fall color in Eldorado Canyon State Park

This image was taken two weeks ago in Eldorado Canyon State park (for earlier pictures from the same outing see here and here). This was quite a while after sunset while I was walking back to my car and the yellow trees were positively glowing.


Blast. Buy a print.
Boring technical data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, ISO 200, f/11, 8.0 seconds. Two different developments in Lightroom of the image were combined in enfuse to balance sky and foreground.
Same image on Flickr. Google+ post.

More fall color in Eldorado Canyon

This image was taken at dusk. I have some nice images looking out over the rock formation with sunset glow on them that I will post at a later time. Now fall color is still topical so I'll show that here. This is a followup to the previous post. This waterfall is fairly easy to find right at a pullout to a big bouldering boulder. You have to scramble down a little through some brush and there it is. There are many nice waterfalls in this area but it is often difficult to get a good angle on them. I think this one works.


Dusk fall. Buy a print.
Technical: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11 mm, f/11, 1.0s. 3 stop grad ND to darken the sky. Processed in Lightroom (no HDR).
Relevant Google+ post. Image on flickr.

Fall in Eldorado Canyon State Park

Yesterday, I dropped the little boy off with mom and sis who is selling tickets as a fundraiser for the awesome organization she rides horses with - The Westernaires. She is close to having sold 400 tickets now, which means she will have two chances to win that horse that we have little idea where to keep but we'll deal with that if it actualy happens. I am very proud though that she is working this hard to accomplish her goal with actually fairly little help from us except for giving rides and keeping her company. She is a better sales person than me. Anyway, I did a quick evening run after this to Eldorado Canyon State Park, a very nice park just southwest of Boulder that is famous for its climbing. I posted some winter images from this place before. The picture I will post below is quite different from those images. Even though as I showed before the high country of Colorado is getting snowed on already, the foothills are still in full fall mode. So I went to Eldorado Springs to hunt for a waterfall surrounded by fall foliage as well as to recreate a sunset shot I did with my phone a while ago but with better gear. The latter didn't pan out as I had hoped (I'll post some images anyway when I get to them), but the waterfalls wwere great. The below is one of those images I found.


Fall in Eldorado Canyon State Park. Buy a print
Technical data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11.5mm, f/16, 0.4s, 3 stop ND and 3 stop grad ND filters to slow down the water and darken the sky. Edited in Lightroom (no HDR here!).
Relevant G+ post. The image on Flickr.

Elk herd in Apex open space

From 2011-10-12

This herd lives in one of my favorite open space parks to do a quick lunch or end of day bike ride. There are lots of elk in the Denver foothills and you don't really have to go up to Rocky Mountain National Park to see them. As long as you are willing to walk/bike a few minutes you can see them up close. This image is from two exposures on my iPhone shooting against the sun combined using a quick mask in Photoshop. The built in HDR as well as the HDR pro app didn't do a good job here as the elk moved between exposures.

Fall color in Steamboat Springs

I've got lots of shots still from last year's fall season. These are some shots from the Spring Creek trail in Steamboat Springs.


Radiance. Single shot, Nikon 18-55 mm at 22 mm, ISO 200, f/8.0, 1/320s


Triangles. Three shot handheld vertical panorama, Nikon 18-55 mm at 18mm, ISO 200, f/8.0, 1/320s.

I have lots and lots more from that same bike ride. This is just a taste.

Fall color in Rocky Mountain National Park

Continuing on on my quest to catch up with uploading images, here are some from a small visit to RMNP in fall. I described one image from this same visit a while ago and I still owe you many waterfall images from that day. The images below are from a little grove of aspen trees that is near the Fall River road. The bark on the trunks of these trees gets eaten by the many elk (basically very large dear for those not familiar with these animals - see an image of a few here on my flickr stream) that reside in these valleys which is why you see the darker area stop at a certain height.


Assembled from 9 images at 70 mm, f/16, 1/30s, ISO 200.

It was raining when I was shooting these images and it was a real challenge keeping my gear dry. I put a black and white version of this image here. As always, clicking on the images will take you to a larger version.

This is a closeup shot of some trunks that I thought formed some nice geometric patterns.

Single shot. 70 mm, f/16, 1/30s, ISO 200.

Another closeup but including some more leaves.

Single shot. 70 mm, f/16, 1/25s, ISO 200.

This is a horizontal view of the group of aspen but from much farther away.

Assembled from 9 images at 70 mm, f/11, 1/30s, ISO 200.

From the same position but much longer lens

Assembled from 9 images at 160 mm, f/11, 1/30s, ISO 200.

After wiping the front elements of my lenses dry and packing up, I moved on to a waterfall called the Alluvial Fan that is just up the road from here. More from that place later.

Ypsilon lake

I am trying to catch up with many many months of backlog. The following images were taken September the 6th of last year. I went up to the park that day later in the afternoon to hike up to Spectacle Lakes (at least that was my plan). I never made it that far as it turned dark way before that and the last bit if that hike is scrambling. I still had a long hike back to the car in utter darkness so I turned around after photographing a waterfall above Ypsilon lake. This is a relatively unknown area in RMNP mostly because it is quite a ways from the trailhead. On the hike to the lakes you first climb a steep hill from the Lawn Lake trailhead and then at about 1.3 miles you cross the bridge over the Roaring Fork river. This looked like a nice location for fall shots where you can get some foliage and some good rapids. After this, you are in the forest for a long time before you reach the first little lake called Chipmunk lake (about 4 miles according to my GPS). When I got there the sun was already setting, so I realized I would not be going up to Spectacle Lakes. I did decide to press on to Ypsilon lake though. Chipmunk lake offers some photographic potential:


Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mmf2.8 at 11mm, f4.5, ISO 200, 1/60s handheld. I think I used a split ND here but I don't remember.


Rock and tree
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11mm, f4.5, ISO 200, 1/80s handheld. Split ND?


Fan of grass
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11mm, f4.5, ISO 200, 1/100s handheld. Split ND?

One nice advantage of small sensor DSLRs such as my D300 for landscape photography is that you can get very large depth of field even at quite wide apertures because the same field of view as on a full frame DSLR is reached at far shorter focal lengths. For the 11mm f4.5 images above for example, the hyperfocal distance is at 1.4 m or so which is more or less where I focussed. If you look at the images enlarged you will see that everything is in focus just fine and you really don't need f/22 or so, allowing me to handhold even at sunset.

After Chipmunk lakes I continued the trail to Ypsilon lake. I saw a camper at the Chipmunk Lake campsite that I waved hello to. He was probably surprised to see a hiker that late. Along the way I saw the first signs of fall. The forest was very dark already, so I had to boost ISO.


First sign of fall

Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11mm, f5.6, ISO 1600, 1/50s handheld. 

Ypsilon lake itself is not very photogenic, but the waterfalls above it that lead up to Spectacle Lakes are spectacular (sorry for the pun). This is a very lush area. The flowers had mostly disappeared, but in high summer this is clearly an area to get images of water, flowers and lush vegetation and I will be sure to return for that. At this point in time, sun had already set and I did not even need ND filters to slow down the water.

Narrow Canyon, mossy rock, waterfall. Check out a black and white version.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11mm, f11, ISO 200, 1s on tripod.

My favorite of that hike is this image

Lots of little falls on a big red rock. Check out a black and white version.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11mm, f11, ISO 200, 2s on tripod. 

Absolutely a place to come back to when the flowers are out. Spectacle Lakes is on my wish list for sunrise.
Edit: Set of images is here. Flickr set here.

Apple harvest

I am woefully behind in posting (I haven't written almost anything about my Australia trip months ago!) but I couldn't pass this up. Our apple trees bore fruit this year and we gathered a lot of apples. Since we don't spray (as a chemist I cannot condone the use of 'chemicals' ;-) ) a lot of them are only good for applesauce but still this is a very fun event. Our property might have been part of an orchard a long time ago, so we have some good tasting apples. We also have planted new fruit trees since we lived here, so we are becoming quite the producer of good stuff.

Calf Creek Falls

Last November, I visited a fantastic place near Escalante, Utah. I had just visited Zion with my friend Dave, and he suggested that on our way back, we would visit Calf Creek Falls. I had seen pictures of this place before, but I had not expected the beauty and sheer magnitude of it. The falls are in the Grand Staircase National Monument and you start the hike from a small campground that is right of highway 12. From there you hike along Calf Creek in a very hot desert and in sandy conditions, until you reach the end of the canyon where it is very lush and forested and turkeys can be seen and heard. At the end there is a small lake in which Calf Creek Falls plummet from the edge of the canyon down. This is a very large waterfall and you can easily see it on the satellite pictures of this area. It's an almost surreal experience to reach this place after hiking through the desert. We took many pictures there and I'd just like to show a few. These are all very high resolution images that can be printed at extremely large sizes while retaining detail. I slowed down the falls by using a neutral density filter. The falls have beautifully colored moss behind them and in spring there must be many blooming orchids of which I saw a lot of evidence, but no flowers of course.

Reflection:


Changing trees:


Side view



Vertical pano:



This last image is extremely high resolution and will print 8 feet high without any issue. It was inspired by an image of the same falls my friend Pete has in his living room that he shot with a very large format panoramic film camera.

There are several more images in the smugmug gallery I created for this place. You can also go to flickr to do the social networking thing.

More images from Zion

As a followup on yesterday's post, I'm Just posting a few more images that I liked.

This is at a place called Big Bend.

A waterfall close to the start of the Narrows. This is a long wispy thing that comes from far up high. I liked the reflection on the wet rock.

This is in the river in the main area of the park. I liked the deep red and yellow colors and the friendly little rapids with lots of leaves stuck in it.

This is a sunrise at the Towers of the Virgin, a classical image of Zion.

Check out all images in this gallery. There is also a smaller photoset at flickr for those that like the social networking thing.

Zion National Park

I fonally got around to assembling and culling some images from Zion National Park. I was there with my friend Dave for a weekend, followed by a hike to Calf Creek Falls in the Escalante area (more on that place later). We hiked the Narrows, shot some sunsets and sunrises and visited the Kolob Canyons area. Here is a sunset along the Virgin River:

This waterfall is at the start to the Narrows

This is a corner inside the Narrows. Some hikers are visible in the distance. I decided to not clone them out. Inside the Narrows, we met a few photographers. The interesting part was that many of them turned around at the first deep area because it was "impossible". It was actually lower than when I last was there and hardly a problem with the wet suits we were wearing. These things are quite amazing. I did not feel cold at any time, even though it turned out that when I after the hike entered the river wearing just Keenes on my feet, the water was very cold.

The light inside this place is quite strange. It gets a very strong orange color that makes the camera pick weird white balances. When I correct this using a grey card, however, the image appears far too warm, so I left it to my own creative devices and corrected to what I experienced. A white balance card does not work in these circumstances!

This is a sunset along the Virgin river looking at the Watchman and Bridge Mountain. There was some good fall color here.

This was just a tad upstream from the famous bridge, where every evening we came by throngs and throngs of photographers were standing all taking the same image. We resisted the temptation to join them. It is a very nice image though as evident from this image taken by Stephen Trainor who turned out to have been there the exact same weekend.

We also hiked up Taylor Creek in the Kolob Canyons area of Zion. Here we found that on that side of the park every single leaf had already been blown off. This was a strange contrast with the main area of the park, where fall color was mostly just starting! This is a nice reflection from a glowing canyon wall in a small waterfall we found.

This was another one of those areas where a white card white balance gave just too extreme results (you can see some of that in an image I posted earlier) so I dialed it down a little which brought back some other tones than yellow.

On our way out, we went east up through the tunnels and took some images on the checkerboard mesa area.

We had a fun weekend and saw some beautiful stuff there. Check out all images in this gallery. There is also a smaller photoset at flickr for those that like the social networking thing.

EDIT 1: Some more images are posted in the next post.

Waterfall

I spent a small amount of time up in the mountains this weekend and found a little stream to photograph. There is still a lot of green high up, so the peak hasn't been fully reached yet. There will be lots of opportunities still I am sure.


(black and white conversion here)

Flickr link


(black and white conversion here)

Flickr link


(black and white conversion here)

Flickr link

I also made a horizontal version of the latter, which I think looks really nice:

As always, these are very high resolution composites of multiple images. My logo will not show up in prints of these images.