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

Icy Reflection

This is an image from Emerald Lake that I captured on a hike up to Emerald Lake for sunrise on December 30th of last year. I have posted on this trip before on this blog and I have many images from this that you can already see in my Emerald Lake gallery mixed in with older images. I spent a long time out on the ice this day capturing many images of the ice and reflections on it. I will post more from this extraordinarily beautiful place but for now here is an image created by stitching 9 images from my D600. This image will print wall sized with amazing detail. Click on the image for a larger view.

Emerald Ice Dragon. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On G+.
High resolution composite from 9 images from a Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 100.

Emerald Lake Panorama

I shot this standing on the middle of the blown open area on the ice that you can see in the previous post. This year has been very low in snow and the ice was just wonderfully reflective as you can see. This panorama was 360 degrees around and is shown in a cylindrical projection. When you are standing in this spot, the mountains just tower around you, so this really doesn't do the majesty much justice except when you see it large. It's also great in a panorama viewer but I need to figure out how to embed that on this webpage (preferably without flash or java).


On the ice. Buy a print. On Flickr. On facebook. On Google+.
Stitched from 12 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 100.

Enter the dragon

This is an image I created a few weeks ago going up to Haiyaha and Emerald in gorgeous Rocky Mountain National Park on a gorgeous (albeit cold) morning. This image was created in the early morning hours that provide great light for landscape photography. In this location, due to its shelter in the Tyndall gorge, the light stays nice for quite a while in winter affording lots of great photographic opportunities. The purplish color in the sky is due to the some hazy clouds in the air. I really like the contrast between the cold colors on the ice and the warm colors on the dragon formation.

Enter the dragon. Buy a print. on Facebook. On flickr. On Google+.
High resolution composite of 9 images. Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 50mm, f/16, 1/80 s, ISO 100.

Freezing my fingers off at Lake Haiyaha

Last Sunday the 30th I went for a sunrise hike to Lake Haiyaha followed by Lake Emerald and above. I have already posted a few images from this trip here and here. I have several more nice images to share from Emerald later but first I want to share a few more images from Haiyaha. Haiyaha is apparently a native American word for rock, which is quite apt as the lake is bordered by lots of really large boulders left by the glacier that carved this valley and is still found higher up in tiny 'Chaotic glacier' which is more like a snowfield. It's visible in the image I posted before. As always I waited a while for the sunrise to come and got shivering cold too lately realizing that I had handwarmers in my backpack - another lesson learned ;-).

Hallett on ice. Buy a print. On flickr, On Facebook, On G+/Picasa.
Nikon D600 on tripod, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 1/13s, ISO 100

The ice on the lake had all these domed structures over large rocks beneath the ice where it had frozen over before and the water level receded creating small pyramids or domes over the rocks.

Lake Hayiaia sunrise panorama. Buy a print. On flickr. On facebook. On G+/Picasa.
Stitched from 15 handheld images. Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/11, 1/50s, ISO 100.

The above image shows about 230 degrees of the view on the lake.

Hallett hat. Buy a print. On flickr. On facebook. On G+/Picasa.
Nikon D600 on tripod, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 42mm, f/11, 1/30s, ISO 100.

I like this more close-up view of the peak. Next up will be some images on the ice of Emerald. Those are my favorites from this hike.

Fault line

Crack in the ice and trapped bubbles on Emerald Lake. I took many images of the cracks and structures in the ice the beautiful morning I was here. When surrounded by grand peaks and vistas don't forget the small details!

fault line. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On G+.
handheld Nikon D600. Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 44mm, f/8.0, 1/25s, ISO 100.

Fish creek trail waterfalls

A few weeks ago, I went on a hike along fish creek near Steamboat Springs.
Upper fish creek falls detail. Buy a print. On flickr. On facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 130mm, f/16, 1.8s, 3 stops ND filter.

This is a detail of the falls I came accross after hiking a while along the trail. This is sort of a mini version of the really well known Fish Creek Falls that is just a short hike from the trailhead. Reaching this took quite some slipping and sliding over icy trails and wading through surprisingly deep snow in places. At the end there was some scrambling over very icy rocks before suddenly this waterfall opened up. I thought this was a nice opportunity to try out the 70-200 mm f/2.8 VRII I had rented from lensrentals.com to play with. That lens is just extraordinary in sharpness and handling and apart from the weight (especially annoying on a long hike such as this) it is ideal. I am looking forward to trying the much lighter 70-200 f/4 that just came out. Below is the context for this shot:

Upper fish creek falls. Buy a print. On Facebook.
High resolution compisite, stitched from 9 images from Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 50mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100, 3 stop ND filter.

I tried pressing on a little higher than this place but was thwarted by very deep snow that was hard to get through without snowshoes, so I decided to turn around and photograph the well-known Fish Creek Falls closer to the trailhead around sunset time. At the bridge, I jumped the railing and scrambled over the rocks and jumped the creek a few times and arrived at a secluded area around the corner where I came accross this:

Seclusion. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 38mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100

I searched around for some different views and took many intimate images of the ice. I like the following image:

Cascade. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 100

I like the hint of the sunset light in the top here. I also took some more conventional images of the big waterfall one of them is below:

Fish Creek Falls in Ice. Buy a print. On Facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 70mm, f/11, 1/5s.

I took a lot of other more wide images of the falls too and also one under mostly moonlight. I might post those later perhaps. Lastly, here is the G+ link for this post.

Winter sunrise at Lake Haiyaha

Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
High resolution composite from 4 handheld images from a Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85mm at 24 mm, f/11, 1/50s, ISO 100.

This image was one of many that I shot on a sunrise snowshoe up Chaos Canyon (where Lake Haiyaha is located) and up to Emerald lake and up after this sunrise. As you can see the sunrise was spectacular even if this hike was extraordinarily cold. It is really a privilege to be able to reach such places and see sights this gorgeous. The peak that is lighting up is Hallett peak, a prominent feature in RMNP but not often shown from the backside as you see here. In winter however, the sunrise hits it most prominently from the backside. In the map below, imagine the sunrise coming from about EastSouthWest.

View Larger Map

Ice fall in black and white

I suddenly remembered that I had visualized the icy waterfall image (Vernal falls in Yosemite) from a few days ago in black and white. Shades of Ansel I guess. I only looked at the images many days later when I got home as I intentionally did not bring a laptop on our Cali vacation so I forgot about that completely. I was taken away by the fact that the late afternoon light came through much better than I had anticipated in the raw images and so the color version was still great. Anyway, here is the image as I imagined it would turn out. I like this quite a bit myself.


Ice Fall Black and White. Buy a print. Same image on flickr. Google+ post.
High resolution composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on a full frame camera.

Ice Fall

This image was taken on Christmas day at Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. I hiked up to this falls and the next one with my daughter. This year, there was basically no snow whatsoever in Yosemite making the waterfalls run very low. People working in the park were all worried and surprised by this long drought. Normally this falls is as wide as the lighter area you can see in the image. It was cold enough however for the water mist to freeze up. Quite spectacular. I tried to capture the extreme contrast in light and feeling between warm mountain and cold waterfall here.


Ice fall. Buy a print.
50 MP Composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on FX.
Same image on flickr. Google+ post on the image.

A Notchtop Morning

I was out at Lake Helene yesterday morning and it was just absolutely spectacular if not very cold and quite deep in the snow (I had not expected to need snowshoes so I was sinking deep at every step). I am still going through the images but I quickly wanted to already share this image with you. It shows Notchtop mountain at the moment of sunrise but covered with a blanket of clouds. The wind was so fierce that these clouds were puffing around really quickly almost as if I was looking at a timelapse video but happening in real life. Quite neat.


A Notchtop morning. Buy a print.
Tech info. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mmf/3.5-5..6 at 24mm. f/16, 1/13s. Raw image developed in Lightroom.
Same image on Flickr. Relevant Google+ post.

iPhone panorama of the Loch and Loch Vale

This was created by 6 shots on my iphone4 (non-S ;-) ) in HDR mode. I stitched them together using hugin later. I did have my phone stitch a similar image using the autostitch app which looked great too, but it lowers the resolution (probably a setting somewhere I should change). I slightly warmed the tone in Lightroom but otherwise this is as is. The image is about 12 MP resolution. Click on it for a much bigger view. It is quite impressive what you can do with a cellphone nowadays.


The Loch iPhone panorama. Buy a print.
relevant Google+ post.

Horseshoe park

Horseshoe park is a place in Rocky Mountain National park along the way to the Fall River Road. In the meadow along the road in the park, one can often see hundreds of Elk and Mountain Sheep. A few weeks ago I stopped along the road and shot a few images that at that moment I thought would look great in black and white. Here one is looking along the creek in the direction of the mummy range.

Tight composition:

Flickr link.

Medium wide:

Flickr link.

ultrawide:

Flickr link.

Enjoy!

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.

Eric Larsen

I recently met a very inspiring figure, polar explorer Eric Larsen. He gave a talk at my work and I spoke to him afterwards. This guy, together with a friend, did the first ever summer expedition to the North Pole and they did it using skies and canoes. One of the reasons was to show how much open water there is on the North Pole and to draw attention to the plight of polar bears. Fittingly they did not see a single polar bear until they got to the actual North Pole leading to some scary moments as they were waiting for the Russian helicopter that was picking them up. An interesting part of his talk was all the excellent photography of which you can see a little bit on his site. Eric insisted on dragging a DSLR along and they charged their batteries every night using solar cells (in summer the sun shines at night on the pole). You think of the arctic sea and the pole as just a big frozen lake, but it is quite convoluted with lots of pushed up ice and other obstacles such as big open rivers. An impressive feat to cross this for sure. Now Eric is gearing up to do a one-year trip visiting the three extremes: The South pole, the North Pole and Everest. See his website on that expedition. The goal is to highlight Global warming by visiting all the coldest places on this world.