A landscape photographer's tour

Keith's travels in the Colorado Rockies - September-October 2008

Trip to Telluride - Fall colours

A round trip to Telluride from Ouray, with lots of trees and mountains.

Although it's not far in a direct line from Ouray to Telluride, there are some quite high mountains in the way, so you drive north to Ridgway, and turn west to travel up over the Dallas Divide pass. and back round to Telluride.

Not a big place - Ridgway.

Driving along CO62, you get a glimpse of the Mt. Sneffels range of peaks - nicely dusted with fresh snow.

A bit further on.

I thought with all the bright yellow trees I'd best do at least one B/W shot.

The long rise from Ridgway to the Dallas Divide pass has some great overlooks of the Mt. Sneffels range of mountains.

This is a Google Earth map that shows the relationship of the towns, roads and mountains.

View Larger Map

I took quite a few sets of photos in order to stitch together - there's no quick way to try this on my laptop, so I've included a range of pictures to give an impression of the views...

Karen took this one of me checking a camera setting or something (while she sat in the car reading ;-)

A bit further along I came across a collection of photographers, including a big 4x5 view camera.

This is what they were looking at.

No autofocus on a 5x4 view camera

Note the interesting lens flare (this was with the GX200)

If you're curious about such cameras, I've written an article about making an adapter to use a DSLR on a 5x4 camera (or 4x5 as they are known in the US)

A bit further up the road.

The road towards Telluride.

The high mountains you can see are the other side of those in the photograph above.

Telluride is right at the end of the valley. There are back roads that go up over the top to Ouray and other places, but not with last night's snowfall.

Telluride street.

We stopped for coffee at the 'Steaming Bean Coffee Co.'

Telluride has a somewhat more 'laid back' feel than the likes of Aspen - here's someone sitting outside of the 'Steaming Bean', reading the Telluride 'Daily Planet'

It even has its own film academy

On the way back to Ouray I turned up a back road, and guess what?

More nice aspens and mountains...

I also had a chat with another pro photographer, Todd Caudle, who was out getting some more landscape shots.

Thanks to all the photographers I chatted with today - always nice to hear of other's work. I did discover that this years colours are reckoned to be some of the best in the last 15 years :-)

>> Next Day >> To Durango via Silverton