Butler Gulch evening

I went on a quick snowshoe last week with my friend from Switzerland, Jean-David. We went for a quick trip to Butler Gulch, which is at the same trailhead as Jones Pass road, near Berthoud Falls and Berthoud Pass. Here is Jean-David sans snowshoes, getting ready for the hike up.



Even though I expected it to be blown bare most of the way, there was more than enough snow to have done it on skis/snowboards. We only had snowshoes with us though.

We went up to the bowl at the end of the trail and climbed a glacial knob that sits in the middle of it to look out over the valley. Up above treeline, the snow was less deep and we would have had to plan our route more carefully were we on skis. The sun was low over the mountains and bathed the bowl in nice yellow light that well contrasted with the blue snow. Here is a picture of my backpack in its natural state:



It's a f-stop Tilopa BC that I recently got and that I am extremely happy with. I'll perhaps review it later. Colby Brown recommended f-stop gear for the sort of backcountry trips I do with my camera gear and he is absolutely right. They make some of the only camera bags that are actually good backpacks and that can carry the non-photo gear that you need on backcountry trips, such as extra layers, food, water, shovels, tents, stoves, etc. It will do it all without compromising on the camera/tripod front. Highly recommended. Anyway on this knoll I created a few images.


Butler Gulch evening. Buy a print.
Composite of nine images from Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 35mm, f/16,1/160s, ISO 200.
Same image on flickr.
Post on this image at Google+.

This image will print as high as your wall with impeccable detail. In large prints, the sunlit area will come alive. On the downscaled image, the sunlit area somehow turns orange. This is because the yellow from the sunlight is mixed in with the red of the rocks I guess.


A bowl of sugar. Buy a print.
Stitch from 9 handheld images horizontally arranged. Individual images from Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 at 11mm, f/16,1/60s, ISO 200.
Same image on flickr.



Primordial. Buy a print.
Single image from Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 at 11mm, f/16,1/60s, ISO 200.
Same image at flickr.

At this point my fingers were starting to freeze a little too much so we decided to turn around and after crashing down through the glades instead of over the trail, drove over to the traditional stop at Tommyknocker brewery in Idaho Springs to eat some well deserved nachos:


From my iPhone.

I have a great backlog of images I promised, so more later.

Blast from the past

Actually only a year ago or so. This is a panorama taken at sunset at Roxborough State Park. It had just snowed like mad the days before. The same storm I think that produced these images. I went on an evening hike in Roxborough with my daughter and we had a blast. The below images were created during that outing a year ago. Can't believe I never posted these. Lovely yellow glow in the sky I think. These images have to be experienced large, which can be done by clicking on them and viewing them in the lightbox.


Glowing hills. Buy a print.
Assembled from 10 images (two rows of five). Nikon D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55 mm at 48mm, f/16, 1/50s. Developed in Lightroom and assembled in hugin.
Same image on flickr. Google+ post.


And just to give you a little extra. Here is another image created on the same outing.

Overview. Buy a print.
Assembled from 12 images (3 rows of 4). Nikon D300, ISO 200, Nikon 18-55 mm at 48mm, f/16, 1/40s. Developed in Lightroom and assembled in hugin.

Lake Helene sunrise panorama

I still need to work on the images from this trip up to lake Helene, but I think the following image will be one of my favorites. It is a panorama taken at sunrise over Lake Helene. You will get a much larger version if you click on the image below. In my opinion it should really be seen large on a darkish background. This image was created by stitching five images taken in a row together. It will of course print very well very large on the longer aspect ratio sizes and I would highly recommend sizes such as 10x20, 12x20 (exact!), 14x22, 20x30. I can do much larger custom prints too. Just contact me. As many people ask me about this: The logo will NOT show up on your print.


Fire in the sky. Buy a print.
Technical data: 5 stitched images from Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/10s.
This image is also on flickr. Google+ post on this image.

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.

Fifteen minutes

I haven't had time to do much with my images from Sunday morning yet (let alone the gigantic backlog of images that I think need to be shown off), but I wanted to share the below juxtaposition. The two images are both composites of 9 images each. The two sets were taken 15 minutes apart. The left one about 13 minutes before sunrise, and the right one about a minute or two after that. The difference in mood and color is very large as I am sure I don't have to tell you. I always love the light just before sunrise. A minute later after the second image the sunrise light got even more intense as I already showed yesterday. the Click the image to see the comparison larger. The mountain is Notchtop mountain and the frozen lake is called Lake Helene. The lake is reached after a 3.2 miles hike from Bear Lake trailhead. Normally that is an easy hike (moderate in the guide books) but at night in the blowing snow and with a disappearing trail because of that, that is a little more challenging. More about that later.

Because of the format of this blog, I can only include a small image inline here, so you should really click to scale it up to a nicer size.

Click for bigger. Not posted online for sale yet, but will be soon - I promise.