While driving home from some mundane Saturday chores, my lovely wife spotted a single bald eagle fly over the car and land in one of the long dead cottonwood trees in the Broomfield Commons Open Space right near the house. So she leashed up the dog, I grabbed my camera and we walked the half mile to where Jen spotted the eagle. On the way, we passed a man walking his dog, and he mentioned that there was not one, but two bald eagles in said tree. We have quite a few Red Tail hawks, Swainson’s Hawks, Peregrine Falcons, and American Kestrels visit the area, but in six years, this is the first Bald Eagle I have seen. One was keeping a watch out on a high branch, while the other was munching on what I deduced to be a prairie dog, more by the color of a spot of fur than anything else. At first I didn’t give the general populace the benefit of doubt when I said that we were the only ones that saw the eagles, quite the opposite was true; there were about a dozen people that stopped to pull out a camera phone, and snap a few shots. All in all, quite an unexpected sight, these magnificent birds.
I woke up one morning last week disgusted with the fact that I haven’t really been outside of a city block in almost four days. I know, yuck. So I headed off before sunrise to catch some of the great winter morning light on the front range, which I missed by about 10 seconds, also the fact that there were some clouds hanging out over the eastern horizon limited the light to about 45 seconds total! Brushing that off, Malie and I headed west toward Brainard Lake, thinking about what that area looks like in the winter, and I was not disappointed. The road from Ward up to Brainard has a winter closure gate about a mile and a half from the lake itself. From that gate, there are a couple snowshoe trails and a nordic-ski-only trail up to Brainard Lake, and the nordic ski trail continues on up another two miles from there to Lake Isabelle. It was easier to just walk up the road where there wasn’t enough snow to require the snowshoes, and I could avoid the other people as well, since I was in need of some alone-in-the-wilderness time. I reached Brainard Lake in about forty five minutes and was continuing on to the Long Lake trailhead when I spotted what I thought were a cow and bull moose browsing in the willows on the south side of the lake. Not expecting to see much wild life at all, I left my 70-300 lens in the truck, arming my self with only my 18-200. After watching the moose for a while through a measly 200mm, I could see that I wasn’t looking at a cow and bull, but three very large bulls! All of them quite mature, with their great palmated antlers stretching at least sixty inches in width. The wind biting at any exposed skin forced me to move back from the lake shore, into the trees, and on to Long Lake. After another mile and a half, I reached the trailhead to Long Lake. The last time I was at this particular trailhead, my close family and I were beginning the fifteen mile, one-way journey to Monarch Lake, a smaller tail-lake of the enormous Lake Grandby. Here are the images from that journey. The short quarter-mile trip to Long Lake was the only section that required showshoes. I was completely amazed that no one else had broken a trail in the snow from there, it brought to life again my inner explorer to know that I was the first one to tread here for some time. Although it was a nice sunny day in the upper forties down in the city, the wind up at ten thousand feet dropped the temperature below the zero mark. The extremely strong winds prevented me from staying as long as I wanted to. All said, it was a good day outside, with some good photographic results:
My snow dog.
Apache Peak (L) and Shoshoni Peak(R)
From left; Pawnee Peak, Little Pawnee Peak, Mount Toll, Paiute Peak, and Mount Audubon
After reading a whole lot about infrared photography, and more about converting a camera body to shoot infrared, I was inspired. Rather than convert my only DSLR camera body to shoot infrared, I recalled seeing in Photoshop CS4 a tool to create an infrared from a regular color image.
I’ve posted in order an original color image of an Aspen tree, a normal high-contrast B&W, and the infrared. The differences between the B&W and IR are very subtle, but if you look closely, they are actually quite different.
The next shot is of the Indian Peaks shows more the effect IR photos have on a blue sky. All the variations of this one image have a different feel or atmosphere to them, which also shows the power of what can be done with digital photography. When I was shooting B&W film, I was shooting it mostly because I could create 8×10 enlargements almost for free, and at the time the artistic value was more or less lost on me. But one drawback was that they all had basically the same feel about them, a beautifully blue sky and vivid fall colors all fell to various grays, and it was very difficult to make a B&W print from a color negative, and have it look any way decent. But now I can shoot everything in color, even though I may be composing an image for B&W, and convert it later.
Okay, so it was too damn cloudy get a good shot of the Flatirons from Chautauqua, so I hiked up to the base of Flatiron #1, which is the northernmost one. I set out from home expecting the clouds to break about 10 am, bathing the Flatirons in a nice light. My luck, the clouds never broke, and it just got colder and snowier. Which isn’t a bad thing, I have a philosophy about photography and weather; some of the most dramatic photos come from the worst weather. Here are some of the results.
Last Saturday, I was able to get out for a few minutes with a buddy and snap a couple of rail shots. We started out east of Denver, at the Mesa siding, and caught an eastbound. Unfortunately for us, the only other train we could catch before dinner was another eastbound coming in on the Moffat. On the way west we stopped to shoot a derailed car near Federal Blvd; this car had rolled free all the way from the Coors brewery in Golden, downgrade until it derailed near Federal. Fortunately no one was hurt by the runaway, especially since a single railcar won’t activate crossing signals. We finished up at Kipling in Arvada shooting an eastbound coal load.
Eastbound grain train at Mesa, Limon Subdivision
Snow blowing off the grain train as it gathers momentum
Derailed covered hopper
Plastic pellets was all that was spilled
These horses showed a mild interest in us, until the train came
Heavy coal train moving downgrade to Denver
Eastbound coal load at Kipling St, Moffat Subdivision
Once again, fall in Colorado has shown how very bi-polar it can be. One day the temperature can be in the upper sixties, and the next day can be thirties and snowing. These images demonstrate that, since they were taken on two successive days in early October. For me, one of the things that heralds the arrival of fall is when the Canadians invade (geese that is), so I took the telephoto lens and shot some waterfowl, Mallards and Canadian Geese.
One doesn’t always have to drive a long way to catch fall time colors. These were taken within a mile of my house! Granted, I am fortunate enough to live half a block from Broomfield open space.
Open SpaceMalie enjoying the long grassI call Cottonwoods 'low altitude Aspens'Sunflower basking the the lightBackyard Aspen leaf turning
I absolutely love autumn in Colorado, the sunlight is different than summer; more vibrant, the shadows deeper and longer, not to mention all the foliage turning from green to blazing oranges, yellows and reds. Here are a couple shots from the Winter Park area.
Parry PeakForest floor in the autumn lightAspens standing the morning lightFallen Aspen leafRavensByers Peak from FraserGorgeous autumn afternoonMount Eva (left) and Witter Peak (right)
