Colorado is growing on me. With each additional exploration, I am finding things that make my heart sing. When I'm busy and stressed, the thought of taking photos of flowers is about as inspiring as watching paint dry. But when I'm out hiking, breathing the fresh mountain air and exploring, the very same flower photos can make me smile. I haven't identified all the flowers that I saw over the weekend, but I was happy to finally put a face to the name of the Columbine-- how lovely! One of the hardest challenges I face with my images is including all the 'keepers' while not being too redundant. With the Columbine images below, I tried to show them in different ways, under different lighting and with different backgrounds. To me, each image captures a different mood.
This weekend's explorations targeted lakes-- some of the explorations were more successful than others. But as you hike over logs, under branches, around moose poop while dodging rain showers, nothing makes the view from the top more spectacular. Sometimes the path less traveled reaps the rewards (like the image below), while other times it's just easier to go along the well-beaten path to where others have discovered the beauty before you (as with the other lake images).
I have been thinking about my need for a graduated neutral density filter for my landscape photography. This last outing solidified that wish. So many of the images I want to make include extremely bright skies with dark foregrounds. A graduated neutral density filter (of which there are many formats and densities) allows you to place the darker half of the filter where the sky is in the image while maintaining an accurate exposure in the foreground. The image below is a good example of this-- the lake and rocks in the foreground are quite dark while the sky (in the original image) is almost blownout. Thanks to the GND filter tool in Lightroom, I was able to mimic this result in post-production. I held out as long as I could without this handy filter, but upon returning home I finally caved and called my favorite photography store (B&H Photo in NYC) and placed my order. The exposure tolerance in digital photography is quite impressive, but sometimes it's virtually impossible to create the scene you have in your mind without the proper tools. I can't wait to get that filter into my hands and in front of my lens(es) and see what kind of results I get.
This is one of those flowers that I haven't been able to identify. Anyone know what it is?
The skies here in Colorado are so amazingly blue. Attaching a polarizing filter manipulates the sun's rays to boost the saturation in an already vivid sky.
I have a tripod, and I also have a monopod-- I rarely carry either on hikes. So how did I take these slow shutter speed images of the cascading creek? I gripped my camera against the base of a tree, turned on the back LCD on the camera, composed my shot, then released the shutter on a time delay. I'm sure the use of a tripod would have given me more liberty with image composition and, probably, clearer focus, but using the 'tools' available to me at the time, I was was able to create images that I am pleased with. The lush, green vegetation along the creek banks almost made me think I was in Washington. Now that's almost the best of both worlds, isn't it?!
