Morning at Medicine Bow Curve

About a month ago we began a journey by getting a very early start out of Fort Collins with the intent of catching the sunrise and wildflowers at the high point along Trail Ridge road in Rocky Mountain National Park.  A large cloud back on the Eastern horizon made for a drab beginning of the day.  However, as we began the drive down the other side of the mountain, a little pink started showing in the clouds overhead.  Luckily, I still had the camera attached to the tripod and we were right near a large pullout.

In this photograph, you can see the Never Summer Mountains (which is my favourite name for a mountain range) in the background and the headwaters of the Cache La Poudre River, which are hidden in the middle ground valley framed by the pine forest.  I worked to find a composition that showed the gleaming ribbon of the stream, but most of what I found lacked the stronger compositional lines of this framing.

I know it's been a long time since I've posted, and the next update may be just as far away.  I'm making some changes in the way I handle my photographs and blog posts.  The delayed posts is the bad news, but the good news is that I have begun to produce my own prints.  This means that images like the one in today's blog post are available as prints in limited or open run editions.

Hope you all are having a fantastic summer!

Sweet Pea of Summer

A perfect summer day in the Laramie River Valley.  Just took about three hours and $40 of gas to find.  But this is the view I wanted and didn't know where it was, so you just gotta keep going until it's found, right?  Earlier in the day, I spotted several clusters of wild irises, an absolute favorite of mine and I have yet to get a single good photograph of one.  

Irises are they're kind of rare along the Front Range of Northern Colorado, which is supposed to be a semi-arid desert.  Our late season snows didn't melt in the usual timing so there is a lot of water saturating the mountains about a month later than usual.  Many large open areas have become veritable wetlands in the late season melt off.

The irises are happy to have the pools of water.  So are the mosquitos.  At the end of the last season, mosquito eggs were laid in the depressions that normally collect water.  They need the freezing temps during their winter dormancy in order to hatch.  When the thaw comes their life begins in the ensuing pools.  Snowpool mosquitos are vicious, they've waited a long time and they emerge in droves!  Clouds of hungry, unapologetic, and ecologically vital blood suckers.  I'm not exaggerating.

When I saw the first patch of irises, I hurried out of the Jeep and squatted on the wet ground with the camera and no sooner turned it on only to be inundated.  The length of my forearm is eleven inches, it was, at the time covered in Deet (a chemical I hate to use).  There were twenty mosquitos on that one forearm.  Photography was no longer a priority.

Driving west I ended up in the Laramie River Valley.  A nice view of the Medicine Bow Mountains and Rawah Wilderness was waiting for me, thankfully sans Mosquitos.  Instead of wild irises, there was an abundance of wild pea.  I'll take it, looks great with the snow covered peaks.  

Usually I don't "arrange" my compositions, but in this case the foreground was a bit sparse.  I spruced it up a bit with the two rocks you see.  It took a short while to find the right ones and get them to help the balance.  If this photography thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll try landscaping next.  I could have a large truck full of rocks ready to show up in front of your house and add a couple next to the petunias.  Piece of cake!

I hope you all find a lot of frivolous fun this weekend.  See you on Tuesday!

Leucocrinum montanum

Sorry the blog's late today.  I spent the last two days cooped up in the studio dealing with an over-stuffed and disorganized image library.  After briefly contemplating deleting the whole thing and starting over, I settled on going out and making more images this morning.  Please accept this bouquet of Sand Lilies, beautiful native wildflowers, as an offer of my gratitude that any of you come around here at all.

Physsaria bellii

Bell's twinpod (Physsaria bellii) is endemic to certain limestone and shale ridges in Larimer, Boulder and Jefferson counties in Colorado, USA.  It's just begun to bloom, the characteristic seed pods will be along soon enough.

Armageddon at Arapaho Bend

After four days of solid grey skies, a small tear in the cloud blanket ran along the Northern Front Range, just enough to shift my inertia.  Hastily, I grabbed the camera, already mounted to the tripod, and sprinted down to Arapaho Bend Natural Area.  When I parked the whole area was awash in sunshine.  Being a hedonist, I just stood there enjoying the warmth.  The tear was soon sewn shut, again, of course, but a little sun poked through itching to play and neither of us could resist those clouds!  I took a few seconds to level everything out and strated shooting for another large pano.   By the third set my bettery was dead, first time that's ever happened, to me.  Guess I should have grabbed the camera bag too!

Madame, I'm Death

An example of the pitch tubes that have become the all-to-grim calling card of Dendroctonus ponderosae. Much of North America is affected by this infestation, and great swaths of forest are filled with dead trees.  But the forests were dying anyway, and the beetles are just as opportunistic as any greedy human industry or corporation.  At least, this is as natural an act as could have happened.  When I cautiously walk in the ravaged forest, I am grateful to have known it's company, to have shared it's life and death.  I hope to share it's rebirth and know it anew.

Along the Salt Lick

The persistent, prevalent overcast skies are punctuating my productivity!  Hiking in Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, Colorado.

Foot Bridge to the Moon

Scouting for the Perigee, I saw the little bugger rising at what I thought was about 45 minutes early!  Grrr...  Glad I was in a good spot to take advantage.

Prairie Perigee

Doing the best I could, where I was, with what was there.  The tremendous amount of light and pollution gives this perigee moonrise the appearance of a  dark and gloomy sunrise.  Not exactly the image I was chasing, but an interesting result nonetheless.
{shot note: the little red lights at the base of this windmill are from a scourge of prairie herpes infecting unprotected tracts of land around the globe}

An Hour in the Eye

Typical of late winter in Northern Colorado, we started this day off with sunny warm skies and by the time we finished our three hour loop hike the sun gave way to the wind that brought the rain that became snow.  I love being outside!
It's difficult to know exactly why I choose certain compositions.  Maybe one interesting detail, maybe the larger view.  The prominent elliptical lines here are certainly important.  It wasn't until later, after much staring, that I could see the eye.  What eye?  The Eye of Horus... Ancient Egyptian sky god, baby!  How cool is that?
Obtuse heiroglyphic halucinations and peculiar weather patterns not withstanding, when I see a view like this, my eye scans for the farthest little bush and my legs begin to twitch toward the horizon.

The Irony of Winter Sun

Blue Mesa Reservoir is Colorado's largest body of water and the largest Kokanee Salmon fishery in the United States.  I've always been curious how places get their names.  To my mind there ought to be a "Blue Mesa" close by, maybe there is and I just haven't found it.  Maybe it's from the abundance of blue light in the area, certainly a striking feature.  I almost drove through this area without stopping because of the huge exposure range.  Then I started to think of it as a challenge.
Standing on the hillside in a full wind attarcted to the quality of blue in the water, I started shooting for the ice and wave patterns, but kept looking up to the hill in the background.  So, I shivered left and right until finding this large textured ice in the foreground thinking it might balance the larger scene.  The square format is an anomaly around here, to be sure.  But this composition had to be shot telephoto to maintain the compression, which meant two exposures to maintain the foreground.  There's something added by that compositing scheme which allows the photo to be considered in several parts as well as the whole.  My eye yo-yos up & down when I look at this, much like when I was standing there.

Prismatic Approach

Sorry for the delayed post, it's been a hectic mourning.  I managed to get out just in time for the colour to begin crawling across the land.

Photographing the dawn at Fossil Creek Reservoir Regional open Space, it can be a struggle to walk away from the infamous tree, but watching the colour develope, I decided to move toward the ice.

Wandering Watershed

Sand Creek trickles through the Boxelder Watershed in Bent Rock Canyon, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO.  An old quad identifies this as Sand Creek, but a sign on the property identifies this as Boxelder Creek.  I'm going with Sand Creek because the old quad matches the actual geography and there's is another creek to the south.

Paladin's Grope

Strikes me as something sinister spreading out.  I can feel fingers twitch toward the grasses.  Far, far from home.

McF Studios Gallery

If any of you are traveling outside this blog's bounding box you may have found the McF Studios front page, and from there perhaps you dove into the Image Galleries link.  About a month ago that would have landed you on the doorstep of my reseller.  Then, as if planned, a week ago, you may have seen a 404 style error page.  Hmm...  I won't get into the particulars, but that situation didn't make me very happy.  Whose fault it was isn't important, but since this is my business and my name it's ultimately my fault that the link suddenly didn't work.

The New Gallery Page at mcfstudios.com

It works now, but you will no longer be taken to a reseller.  Instead you are presented with a gallery of my photographs.  These are all taken very near my home of Fort Collins, CO.  I think they are some of my best work.  Please take a minute to enjoy.  Web based print sales will return, until then if you'd like to purchase a print, please drop us a line at contact@mcfstudios.com.

Thank you, have a pleasant weekend.

-r.
P.S.  It's a flash based gallery, so it won't work on your iPad.  I'm working to rectify this, but it may take a few weeks.

Pinion's Perch

One little pinion perched on a hill / Comes a storm to break your will / Not my problem, I don't care / I can move from here to there / You're all alone up on your perch / Tell me now what is it worth / We'll face this rain but seperately / Hope you last this calamity.
(it's that mockingbird song, and it sounds much better if you sing it)

Fuzzes

Ok, enough with the pseudo painting.  It's fun and there's probably an application out there for the technique, but sooner or later you gotta get back to work... right?  Work?  That doesn't sound like fun at all.  Maybe just another few minutes in the grass... it's sunny and warm right now, the winter is coming, too, so let's enjoy the little bit of fall we have left. 
I have a few projects that are commanding a lot more of my time than I want them to, but they must be finished, and soon.  So in the coming weeks the blog may get a little lighter, I'm thinking, three times a week.  We'll see how it goes.

City Park Fauxtumn

Then I got really bored and whipped this up with my favourite oil paints.  Mmm... linseed...
Not really, it's a 100% digital creation.  In the beginning of the year, I photographed several of these magnificent trees in City Park.  Before the horrendous wind started, I took a trip to see how they were getting along in Autumn.  Gorgeous as ever, I wasn't satisfied with the greater atmospheric occurrences and just took some snapshots to record the locations.  Enter the new painting technique...
Enjoy!

One Hundred!

Today is my one hundredth post!  Glad it's a happy colourful image.  Finally put the studio back together and got most everything plugged in again.  The new layout didn't come together the way I wanted, but it's certainly better.  Feels good to be back to work!
Saw this tree the other day after I had pack up to hike back tot he Jeep.  The sunlight in the leaves and all those colours, I had to stop and shoot more!  Who could give this up?  Yellow, green, red, blue... what'd I miss?  Pretty sure if it's a colour it's in the photograph... gonna be a pain to get this one printed correctly.

In Eddies Gone By

Yikes!!! It's Tuesday morning, again, already!  Yesterday I decided to tear my studio apart in order to add some much needed insulation.  (Wonder how the apartment complex would feel about that?)  This turned into a bigger project that originally envisioned.  As is my style, after disconnecting my computers, then moving my desks, I started to see new ways of arranging the work area to create a more efficient space in a comfortable environment.  Well begun is half done, but I have a feeling I'm creating a backlog of work for myself.  So, let's call it an experiment.  If I commit enough time to make the space more efficient, I should be able to gain some of that time back, right?  Hmm... seems specious at best.

Today's photograph is a shining example of how a little extra energy can make a lasting impression.  This creek bed is long since dry, but the eddy pools left deep scars that provided a little needed contrast to the environment.  If you dig deep enough here, you may just find water, probably not enough for a human, but the lizards and insects and anything with roots can find a full bounty of moisture.
The blog may be sketchy for the rest of the week.  I'll do my best to post at my regular schedule, but that will depend on how deep the hole I'm digging gets!