A landscape photographer's tour

Keith's travels in Colorado - April-May 2006

In 2004 Keith first took his then fairly new Canon 1Ds on a driving tour round the Rockies in the USA.

This photo-diary covers a second driving trip around Colorado in April/May 2006.

There are lots of excellent photo books by people who've had a bit more time to look round than I have, such as this one by John Fielder... (lots of places I didn't get to)

This collection of photos and comments has been re-written to make it easier to follow than the original (big) web page.

On my return to the UK, I wrote a more technical article about the photographic aspects as a follow up to my original "Keith's first all digital visit to the Rockies"

There are other photo travel diaries covering trips to:
Washington and Oregon in September/October 2007 and California/Oregon in April/May 2007

Note for visitors from Colorado - I had a great time, thanks! I do really like the place :-)

	Daily pages 27th April London-Denver 28th April South park 29th April Leadville 30th April Aspen 1st May Aspen 2nd May Steamboat Springs 3rd May Steamboat Springs 4th May Steamboat Springs 5th May Delta 6th May Gunnison 7th May Gunnison 8th May Gunnison 9th May Fairplay 10th May Pikes Peak and back to Denver
What's the weather like? National Weather Service radar	Webcams What are the roads like?

Leadville

I'm not really an early morning person, but one of the nice things about travelling 7 hours west, is that it becomes easy to get up at 6am (well for a week or two).

This morning it was bright and sunny, with a light fall of snow everywhere. I set off for Leadville via Frisco and I-70

A quick diversion up a side road and some of yesterday's hidden mountains were visible.

side road

Side road

And one for next year's Christmas card collection...

trees and snow

Trees and snow

I'm just doing quick conversions to black and white here, and many pictures at this size look better in colour on the web. Hopefully a bit of work back home will produce some of the B/W prints I'm looking for.

The difference this time using the 1Ds, is about 15,000 photos taken between my first visit to Colorado and this one :-)

That equates mainly to a better knowledge of how to get the best exposures, and a better eye for what will look good in black and white.

Even so, I find it takes a couple of days before I start to 'see' the shots that really work.

twin lakes

Twin Lakes, CO82 towards independence pass -- closed :-(

Taken with 24-70mm lens, converted to B/W with 'Convert to B/W Pro'. The image was cropped at the bottom to get rid of the foreground and emphasise the sky. As a print I'll be able to get a lot more 'texture' in the clouds.

So after a while I stopped in Leadville, at just over 10,000 feet. At this time of year you get the impression that nothing much happens on a Saturday afternoon.

leadville, CO

Well, apart from a few bars...

saturday afternoon drink

Leadville

Cold and dry

The pictures below was taken in the Cloud City Coffee house (see last visit) It is converted using ACR and has had some shadows/highlights adjustment.

coffee on table

I've exposed to just clip the brightest part of the sky, and pull the rest out of the shadows. I've also improved the focus/depth of field (16mm at f18)

While the image is much easier to work on than the original (which took a lot of work), the place just didn't look so interesting, and the picture on the wall that makes the original had been sold.

Anyway, enough of this ... time to go out for the evening ;-)

Tomorrow ... East of here I think :-)

Oh, I forgot to mention the nearby gas station/qwik-e-mart, the interestingly named "Kum & Go", with this perceptive sign outside :-)

chocolate trumps flowers every time

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