Cubic Frost

I told you the nights got really cold!  After the light of dawn had faded into another disconcerting overcast morning, I hung my head (which helps me find stuff) and saw the frost was still around.  Since I wanted to laydown anyway,  I got down to about an three inches off the leaves to shoot this at 1:1.  The DoF was tricky, I wanted all the frost in focus and none of the ground.  After throwing a medium sized tempertantrum (awake and working for three hours w/o the benefit of coffee) I decided on a 7mm exposure stack 1mm apart, all at f/45.  The Nikon R1C1 and a well made focusing rail really made doing this a lot easier.  Had to keep finding new subjects, though, because I couldn't stop breathing on them and melting the frost. (Duh!)

Polaris on a Cold Night

An EN-EL4a with three quarters of a charge will shoot 34 four minute exposures when the thermometer reads 36F, in case you are curious.  That's around 2 1/4 hours.  Which is enough for an interesting Polaris, but I'm gonna have to get some handwarmers for the Milky Way trails later this winter.

Paradise Divide

The headwaters of the Slate River as they cascade down the surrounding slopes to writhe through a valley of their own.

When this image was made, I had been squatting for over three hours on the hillside waiting for that cloud to cooperate with my composition.  When it finally began to behave, most of the colour was gone.  Bastard clouds!  I haven't done much black and white since Agfa Scala followed the dodo, but every once in a while, I see something that really wants to be black and white, like this very pretty place.

Momentary Loss

I admit it... I'm an artsy-passionate photographer.  When that ridiculous title carries the presumption that my craft or knowledge is somehow less than that of a guy running a business involving a camera, I get a little indignant.  So, tonight's assignment was "go to an ugly place and come back with one interesting photo straight out of the camera".  The secondary goal was the alchemy of turning anger into creativity (beat that Mr. Workingclasshero).  I believe art is the highest form of education.
Image notes:  in camera JPEG conversion of a single RAW file, only post work was dust removal on the JPEG.  Single 6 second exposure.  There wasn't any fog last night and I didn't miss a dust spot, it's a cat-faced spider cleaning her web.

Let Them Go, They Will Return

Walking back the Jeep, I was struck by the beauty of this composition.  The colour was muted by the overcast sky, the air had warmed enough to make me sleepy and I just wanted to lay in the grass listening to the gentle rustle of Autumn.  (it's Monday, who doesn't want to go back to bed)

In The Shadow Of Earth

That may seem like an overdramatic title until you realise the dark blue band along the horizon is actually the Earth's shadow.  In this image you are looking west at the end of the civil twilight that preceeds dawn.  The heavily faceted quartz crystals in the granite errily reflect the alpenglow as though they are glowing from inside.  Veedauwoo itself is an overdramatic location that has on more than one occasion tried to kill me.  I still love it, though, and was glad to be there in the warm morning braced with the rocks for the last sunrise of summer.

Last Spin Of The Summer

Spin, spin, great circle!
Ninety-six minutes during the last night of summer as a full moon lights the changing aspens of Veedauwoo.  Smoke from a fire in the expanse of land northwest of this location hangs low and is illuminated by the negligible light pollution of Laramie, WY.

The Broken Bridge

Seems like every fall, I find a composition that allows me to place a sun star in the leaves of an aspen tree.  As if on queue, I clamboured across this bridge and turned around to play.  Sometimes you just get lucky.

Aspirations

Everything was going swell this morning until all the clouds lined up to block the sunrise.    I hung my head in despair and noticed these grasses admiring the reflection of clouds in the prefectly calm surface of the pond.

Ponds Below Elbert

Mount Elbert, 14,440' (right), is the highest peak in CO, and the highest in the Rocky Mountains of NA.  Might not look that way from this vantage, but once you start walking up the hill, you quickly realize the scale.  No filtration, no multiple exposure fancy compositing, just a single 2.5 second click before dawn.  The sun rising into thin clouds way way way out east, which was killing the colour in the sky, but bathing the ground in a soft warm pink light.  After snapping this, I scrambled down the hill through the stream and over to my second perch for the morning.  This light wasn't going to last!

The Cast Removed

This photograph is the same as the one in my earlier post.  But the great yellow glow was just too much, so I corrected this for the little bit of blue sky in the left of the frame.  Not much different, but certainly a more natural balance to the scene.  Artistically, I prefer the other photograph, which is what I was pursuing at the time.  Only in hindsight, did I consider that the yellow from the filter gives a fantastical and sinister quality to the photograph, and a more natural balance might be more alluring to the viewer and therefore, bring the photograph closer to the idea.  Incidentally, all preferences aside, this is the version I submitted to a recent contest, because when it comes down to scrutiny, you can't argue with natural colour.  Hope you enjoy both!

As They Whisper, So They Move

I started down this road while waiting for a couple of noisy folk on quads to leave the area.  In many ways I'm like the wildlife, people come and I go.  Downhill, to be accurate.  Not much was happening photographically, I was at an elevation of 8600 feet without a single cloud in the late afternoon sky.  The fall colour was about a week before the real peak would happen.  There are some beaver ponds in the area that I wanted to scout for the following morning's sunrise shoot.  You'll see those trickle through the blog in the next few days.  So, with all that sun, I had been playing with the blue/yellow varicolour filter, does interesting stuff to the light when all you have is big bright sun.  The colour in this photo is from stacking the filter with a polarizer.  Instant autumnal peak!  At the bottom of the hill was a drained pond and thick mud.  The road took a hard 165 degree turn to avoid the mud, but the photographer did not.  Instead I plodded through to see the area just behind the former dam and found another little pond.  Lots of dead trees sticking up through thick muddy water.  Time to turn around.  Walking back up the hill, I noticed the way these trees leaned and bent over the road.  The autumn glow gave the impression they are playful among themselves, but cautious with outsiders.

Head of the Slate

Two late season snow fields and several incipient drainages purge the steep hillsides of excess water and feed into the Slate River Valley, Colorado.

Happy Friday!

Bracteantha in UV

Wandered out late last night armed with a couple of handheld UV flashlights just to see what reacted.  Since we were dressed in mostly black clothes ( a hold over from art school) wearing hoodies & carrying camera gear and flashlights, I was certain we would be incarcerated as terrorists!  But our luck held out and we found this fantastic reaction in the CSU Annual Flower Trial Garden.  If this has piqued your interest, you can view a small gallery here.  There's also a link to the same gallery, now, in the "Portfolios" section.  Also, there will be yet another "bonus post" today.  So, if this funky flower joined you for breakfast, check back around 12n (MDT) and there'll be something new for lunch.  Cheers!

Bonus Thursday Post = FLY AGARIC!

Might have been the most prolific mushroom of the season.  Every where I went these were in full screaming beaming sprout!

The Clearing To Come

Little drops on the needles of the pines catch hits of sunshine.  After seventeen hours the rain finally relented.  Slightly comforted by the sighting of colour, we shiver into the night.  Everything in the forest yearns for dawn.

Gothic Mountain Scene, Plate 1

The view down Washington Gulch as a late summer storm brews.  I tried to balance the view between the two dominant subjects, the commanding mountain and the explosion of yellow flowers.

Turkey Creek Rainbow Streak

I've been chasing this phenomenon with a camera for decades.  Never really happens in very photogenic places, or so goes my luck.  Pretty, though.  Had the camera pressed to the windshield for several clicks until I found a good spot to pull over.  Just several minutes up the canyon, the foreground got a lot better, but my angle to the sun changed, so, no more prismatic effect.

Marmot in an Old Truck

Above the town of Crested Butte sits the remnants of Painter Boy MIne. Surrounding the old sluice is a weird collection of old junk seemingly posed on the hillside as a grave marker.  It provides the local human population a with targets of various squishiness.  For this I used an SB-900 racked to 200mm, the next day someone else was using something a lot more explosive!

Ten Seconds at Camp

...and so it began, another week in the mountains, another seventeen hours of rain.  Gotta get that campfire  hot!  It's gonna be a few day before the wood dries out.
Gone Camping.
Happy Friday!

Hydranomoly

This spunky fireplug sits about seven feet from a paved foot train in a local Natural Area.  An example of the planning committie's forethought and preparedness, or a leftover from the previous zoning?

Any Moon Tonight

A Paddletail Darner (as in "darning needle", yes that's why) fancies a lamp globe.  These guys, like many of the insects you see at night, navigate using the moon.  Instinct says, "Go toward the light!", but it doesn't tell you what to do if you get there.
Dangle for all you're worth, little man!

Contest Entries

                Cold Burn, 2009                                               Dream Lake in a Fog, 2009

Evening Events

Ever find one of those places that you don't want to leave?  I set up my tent and sat here for nearly a week.  Most of the recent photos are from very close to this exact spot.  In the afternoons, I'd head into the mountain (literally), but mostly... I stayed close to this spot.

Wilting Goldeneye

Torrential rains followed by an excruciatingly cold alpine summer night and these Showy Goldeneye have had enough for one season.

Daisy's Dew

Subalpine Daisy

Shiver in the mourning dew.

Eager for the sun.