Frosty fairytale

In the previous post I showed a panorama of the top of Mt. Galbraith near Golden. This is a wonderful small open space park right on the edge of town. This was a very interesting morning where the fog had frozen on every branch and tree limb and had formed amazing structures everywhere. I was completely alone this morning. A feeling strengthened even more by the quiet of the fog. I had forgotten my tripod, so all the images here are handheld, including the panorama from the previous post. Luckily I had not forgotten some traction devices for my shoes as the trail itself was covered with a thick coating of ice and it was the most slick I have ever seen any trail. One place I finished first was my favorite tree in this park that looks just like a bonsaï. The frost and the fog made everything quite monochromatic, so prepare yourself. I hope you enjoy these images as much as I enjoyed making them!

Frosty Bonsaï.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 18mm, f/11, 1/100s, ISO 100



The pitcher.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 25mm, f/11, 1/100s, ISO 100



Mystery.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 28mm, f/11, 1/80s, ISO 100



Panorama at the top
Stitched from 20 handheld images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 1/50s, ISO 100
This is a high resolution panorama for printing. You should check it much larger by clicking as this blog's format doesn't like wide images much.



Pinnacle.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 24mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 100



The orator.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 21mm, f/16, 1/50s, ISO 100



Follow the trail.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 1/50s, ISO 100



Edge of the burn. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 20mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 100



The trail continues.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 55mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 100

Black and white conversions of snowy landscapes

I was rummaging through old material in Lightroom recently and I noticed some shots from an awesome multihut ski trip I did a few years ago (2008) with some friends. I wrote then about it on my blog and my friend Teresa actually made a writeup of that trip at that time here, where you can see some of the very few photographs that ever got made of me (elusive guy). I am in the red wind shell most of the time in the pictures from Teresa.

Anyway, I noticed that I never got around stitching several multi-image shots I made back then. For weight I was carrying my old Nikon D50 with the kit lens and I did not bring a tripod (more booze could be packed this way). In some cases I was doing handheld multishot panoramas to create higher resolution landscapes. If you do this right, they can still be stitched well even though you might have to do a little touch up afterwards. I worked up a few of these lost landscapes and below I'll post some. I am most focusing here on the aspect of black and white conversion as I noticed that this really works well with some of these. For example, this shot from the front of the Goodwin/Greene hut was captured around sunset. The sun was coming through a thin cloud of snow crystals and generated this absolutely gorgeous light. I cannot believe I never stitched this image.


5 shots using a Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lense at 18mm, ISO 200, f/10, 1/320s. Assembled in hugin. Pretty much as shot - no nasty HDR. Buy a print

This image really has to be seen large, which you can if you click on the link. To get back here use your browser's back button.

I converted this to black and white in Lightroom simulating a light red filter which again has to be seen large.

Buy a print

Another new image that I really like is this panorama of our group coming up on a pass, rising out of a foggy valley.

5 images from a Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lens at 30 mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/500s. Buy a print

In the same place, but looking in the other direction, I took this image:

6 images from Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lens at 24mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/500s. Buy a print.
At the moment, my blog's banner has another version of this image that was taken a few minutes later after the clouds on Castle and Cathedral peaks cleared up a little. This cloudy view is also quite nice and will print really nice large for on your wall ;-)

I have several more images waiting to be born in my library from this trip. We'll see when I get to them. I still have a gigantic backlog to deal with with some very nice images in them too that I haven't spoken about yet. I have a little picasa gallery of new snowy black and white conversions here.

Foggy and icy morning

This is last Friday morning. It had frozen very hard the night before and snowed the day before.

The image links to a larger version on smugmug. Check it out in flickr here. In order to not blow out the sun, I created this image from 5 bracketed handheld shots combined using enfuse and did a small amount of brightness/contrast and curve work in Lightroom afterwards.