Three viewpoints on Mystic falls

Last week I visited hidden Mystic falls which is close to Telluride, Colorado. It is an amazing box canyon waterfall that you have to scramble a bit for to reach. There are many pages on the web that detail how to reach it. The best is probably found here. I rode to the trailhead in my little Subaru without any issue but I might be a lot less careful than most so hiking the last part is not a big deal if you need to especially since the descent to the falls is really quite short. I have three favorite images to share that were taken at different angles and focal lengths.

The Mystic river.
Nikon D600, Nikon 14-24 mm at 14mm, f/11, three shot HDR at 1/50, 1/30, and 1/15s.

Mystic streams.
Nikon D600, Nikon 14-24 mm at 24mm, f/16, three shot HDR at 1/13, 1/6, and 1/3s.

Levels.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm at 50mm, f/16, 1/6s.

My favorite is the tighter composition at the end but it does omit some of the context. I am guessing this place is going to be awesome in fall! Lastly as a bonus, here is a 360 degrees panorama of the place. Follow the "view on google maps link to see it in full screen glory and don't forget to look all around!

Andrews Creek

In the process of cleaning up my Lightroom catalog I am running into 100's of images I love. Here are two images from Andrews Creek in Rocky Mountain National Park that I took on July of 2015. I published one image from here but have never shown two others that I love. These are both at the point where the semisecret trail (it's not marked and disappears several times in the trees so you'll need some route finding skills) to Andrews glacier takes off from the main trail that leads to Lake of Glass and Sky Pond in Loch Vale. This is a gorgeous area in Rocky Mountain National Park well worth the hike. The first image is one I published before but never highlighted. The second and third are ones that I just discovered and actually like even more. I hope you enjoy these images.

Downfall.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/13, 0.8s, ISO 100.

Jumbled.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 0.8s, ISO 100.

From hither.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 0.8s, ISO 100.

Gate keepers

It's been a daunting task to keep up with the images that are being ingested into Lightroom. I have a set of images to share from the Great Sand Dunes, which I visited back in April. I've only shared some fully immersive panos from that trip but I haven't shared much in the way of actual images. See an example of one of such immersive panoramas here. Worse, I haven't been able to share many of my images from a trip to White Pocket in 2014! The best images from that trip except for the ones in the link are still locked up in my Lightroom catalog. At the same time, some revelations in digital imaging as well as the new panorama tools in Lightroom have made me go back to even earlier times. The image I share below for example was taken on October 31 in 2009 in Zion National Park while exploring the Narrows with my friend Dave. We were there just on the cusp of fall color hitting and once in a while we would find trees in the canyon that were in color like the one on the right here while the one on the left is still mostly green. We were in full wetsuits and at places we had to hold our gear above our heads as the water was near our shoulders. I was reminded of these images and the trip while hearing about the tragic deaths that occurred in the slot canyons in this beautiful park just recently. The image below is a stitched high resolution composite of 9 images along the gorgeous Virgin river in the park just a few days ago. I shot this with my D300 camera using the kit lens using my old homemade panoramic head. I stitched this using the new panoramic tools in Lightroom and edited and cropped. The native image is 7530x7530 pixels or 57 megapixels as I cropped from the full stitched image for a better composition. I hope you enjoy the image

Gate Keepers. Zion National Park. Oct 31, 2009. Stitch from 9 images, Nikon D300, Nikon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 at 35mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 200.

Indian Peaks morning

Last weekend, I went on a short sunrise hike with friends from the cmc Dan and Jon at the Arapahoe Pass Trail in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. We waited for sunrise at a very steep waterfall that had quite a few flowers around it. Unfortunately there was so much wind there that all the flowers were getting blurred in all our pictures, so I have 100 images with blurs where the flowers are supposed to be. Most of the high resolution stitches I tried to do at sunrise didn't work for that same reason either. Also, the clouds prevented the sun from rising at its scheduled time and it didn't show for 20 minutes after sunrise. I did come away with some images I like though that I'll post over time. Here are a few to start. As always, click on the images for a bigger version.

Arapahoe Pass Trail Sunrise. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/6s, ISO 100.

I was standing in the waterfall to take this image. Luckily my boots are still fairly waterproof. Below is the same waterfall looking up. I also have an interesting image of about the same viewpoint taken on the way back down in different light that I will post later.

From hither. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/8s, ISO 100.

There were enormous amounts of flowers along the trail. Here is a cluster of Columbines that I really liked.

Stack. Buy a print. At flickr. On facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/4 at 140mm, f/4, 1/80s, ISO 400.

Spectators. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/10s, ISO 100.

I have a lot more to share from this very pleasant morning. In the mean time, I'll share with you this map with the geomapped locations of all the pictures I took that morning on it. I love this feature in Lightroom. I generate gpx tracks using my phone. Import the tracks into Lightroom and just autotag the entire series of images in one click. Couldn't be simpler.

Boulder Brook in rain

I went back to Boulder Brook, this time in summer to see if it is nice with some flowers around it. Indeed it is, however, it was raining hard when I was there. I also needed to shoot a series of images for the presentation I did for the CMC photoclub about moving water where I change the shutter speed and show the effect on moving water, so despite incessant rain and mosquitoes, I made the series and here is one shot from Boulder Brook. I have been to this magical place many times before and it is always fantastic. This time is no exception. Unfortunately I dropped my Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 lens' cap and it got carried of by the stream. I haven't located a replacement yet.

Wetness in the forest. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 17 mm, ISO 400, f/16, 1/5s.

Up and Down - Standley Lake Reflection

One of the first 1000 images I took with my new D600. I am now at 6600 or so shutter events and had to clean the sensor for the second time.

Up and down. Buy a print. Flickr. Facebook. Google+.
Nikon D600. Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/11, 0.6s, 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.

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.

Baker Beach Sunset

These images are from a California trip I did with my family last winter. We went to Baker Beach at sunset and played in the water a bit. This is a really nice place to see the sun sink into the ocean and see the famous bridge illuminated by nice golden light. Even though it was December 22nd, it was wonderfully warm and we had a blast. I posted one image from this little outing a long time ago already over here so I won't repeat that image and instead give you a few others.

Sunset at Baker Beach. Buy a print. At flickr.
Stitched from 10 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/320s, f/11.
As you can see my daughter was having a lot of fun in the water.

Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
The breaking waves gave lots of opportunity for interesting shapes.

Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
And gorgeous color contrasts.

Red and Blue. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 52mm, ISO 200, 1/125s, f/8.
That got more intense later. I just love the contrast between the blue water reflection and the red bridge.

Sun worship. Buy a print. Not on flickr ;-).
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 55mm, ISO 200, 1/800s, f/5.6.
I did not put this image on any social media. Baker beach is well-known for a "certain kind of sunbathing". Even though this image is in no way risqué in my view, American sensibilities are rather strange to me so I only put it here.

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.

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.

Emerald Lake reprise

I went up to Emerald Lake in RMNP yesterday evening with my daughter. Even though this place is a traditional sunrise setting, I know from the geography of this place that in midsummer, it should work as a sunset too. Hallett peak and the ridge to the left should be lit by the setting sun and could create a nice band of light especially when it is cloudy at the same time. This evening looked promising but unfortunately, as happened many times before, the clouds were just too thick for any color. On top of that it started pouring right at sunset and didn't let up the whole time walking down to the car. Still had a great time. I did create the below panorama that I still liked.


Rainy Emerald Evening. Buy a print. See on flickr. See on G+. Large on smugmug.
Stitched from 7 images. Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 at f/16, 1/10s, ISO 400 (forgot to change it ;-) ).

Portal

Portal. Buy a print. See on flickr. See large.
Assembled high resolution composite from 10 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 34mm, ISO 200, f/8.0, 1/30s.

This is the same puddle as seen in an image I posted before about but looking towards the East instead of the West. The mountains lit by the last sunrays are the La Sal mountains.

More from Rifle Falls

Some more images of the very photogenic Rifle Falls on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. I posted an image from here before, as well as a a lamentation on water drops on the lens. My photo buddy Dave Peterman told me about this place a few years ago but I never had a chance to visit. Certainly nice and the waterfall works even during the day and not just at sunrise or set.
See also the G+ post on this.


Companions. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, f/22, 1.0s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer.
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.


rear view mirror. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, f/22, 1.0s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.


Up front. Buy a print.
Tech data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 12mm, f/22, 0.8s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + circ. polarizer
Click for bigger. Image on flickr.

Perils of photographing a waterfall

The image I posted yesterday needed some cleanup. The misting was so strong that within a few seconds, my filters would be covered in drops. Too fast to prevent by working fast, so I knew that digital tools would have to be involved in rescuing the images.

Right: Before extensive Photoshop spot healing tool work
Left: After

I had lots of trouble with drops on the filters as the below image will make very clear:


Amazing what is visible at 11mm and f/22. Obviously that image is a total loss apart from the novelty of showing it here. The dark corners are due to the stacked ND and polarizer and are visible when zoomed out all the way to 11mm on the Tokina 11-16mm and largely disappear when I apply lens distortion correction in Lightroom and crop a little. The price of stacking filters on a ultrawide lens I guess.

Rainbow

A rainbow forms in the mist sprayed by Rifle Falls in Rifle Falls State Park on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. A nice place to visit and camp in the walk-in tentsites (which are spectacular especially with kids - I don't understand why people like camping in movable homes). The falls are an easy walk from the walk-in tentsites either through a nice trail with lots of wild turkeys or over the dirt road. The falls themselves are overdeveloped and overvisited but very pretty and nice and cool on a record heat day in Colorado. Certainly a far cry from all the wildfires in the state at the moment. My heart goes out to all those affected. I'll post more later.


Falls. Buy a print.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11 mm, f/16, 0.4s, ISO 200, circular polarizer and 4 stop ND filter to slow down the water.
Click for bigger. Same image on flickr. Same on G+.

Stormy fall

This is a waterfall just above Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I was out on a hike with friends that only went to Lake Isabelle and I continued on to the glacier which would have been a little much for my companions. I showed the map profile to my hike in a previous post already. This was the wrong time of day for good light but nevertheless, some clouds came in and provided some extra interest.


A storm brewing. Buy a print. Click photo for bigger on my smugmug site.
Photo data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 13 mm, f/16, 0.5 s, ISO 200, 4 stop ND + polarizer.
Image on flickr. Image on Google+.

You can barely see Navajo peak peeking out above the falls. Above Lake Isabelle, the landscape is just teeming with Marmots. I must have seen more than 20 or so. I took a picture of one with my phone:


Post on Google+

They are quite funny.

Sunrise over De Lek

Symmetry. Buy a print. Enlarge.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 16 mm, f/11, 1/60s, ISO 200. 2 stop Grad ND. Slight edits in Lightroom 4 to bring out the fog near the little pier and the sand.
Smugmug image. Flickr image. Google+ post.

This image was created looking out over De Lek river towards the rising sun. As a child and teenager I spent lots of time swimming from these sandbars near the river as well as sailing it. On the opposite side of the river is Langerak and Nieuwpoort where our old wooden sailboat was usually in the harbor.

Sunrise at the Bol

I went to photograph the sunrise at a small natural area forming a riverdune in the Lek (an extension of the Rhine river) in The Netherlands yesterday morning with my father (an art silversmith living in Schoonhoven - check out the link, he makes extraordinary stuff). This is an interesting area with lots of beautiful flowering trees, tidal planes and more. Here is an interesting reflection captured in the clay-like mud.


Fingers. Buy a print.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 at 11mm, f/16, 1/50s
Smugmug enlarge. Flickr image, Google+ post.

This was a wonderful morning where we saw lots of pheasants, hares, and other animals but also gorgeous skies.

Ephemeral pool sunrise

Continuing on yesterday's theme, here is one of the ephemeral pothole pools on the White Rim at dawn. These potholes are very interesting in that they harbor extremely hardy life such as brine shrimp that can survive long periods of drought and resprout to life when there is some rain.


The eye - ephemeral pool in Canyonlands NP. Buy a print.
Assembled into ultrahigh resolution (50 MP) from 2 sets of 9 images each from a D300 with Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 34 mm, f/16, 1/5s (exposed for the sky) and 2.5s (exposed for foreground)
Smugmug enlarge. Flickr page. Google+.