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A landscape photographer's tour
Keith's travels in the Colorado Rockies - September-October 2008
Through the Rocky Mountain National Park
Estes Park to Grand Lake over the 12,000 feet Trail Ridge road.| This photo-diary covers a driving trip around the Colorado Rockies in September/October 2008.
Although my third visit to the state, it's actually the first time I've been in Colorado at this time of the year. There are also photo-journals on this site covering a 2006 trip to Colorado and two to the Pacific coast.. 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) |
Since I'm not on my own, it's a bit more of a driving tour and not quite so heavily phototgraphy oriented as before ;-) That said, I'm getting some excellent shots and look forward to creating some great new prints over the next few months. I'll also be using quite a lot of the images for some of the many new reviews I'm writing later this year.
Colorado is a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip round the state to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.
Slightly delayed today due to the damp string/internet where we're staying
Leaving our Motel and heading in to Estes Park, it looks to be a good day to drive over the top of the mountains ahead.
As someone who likes black and white landscape photography, the site of clear blue skies is not always welcome, but this time I'm thinking colour (or 'color' I suppose for the next couple of weeks)
The road (Hwy 34) goes over 12,000 feet, a climb of nearly 5000 feet from where we are.
I've been to the Rocky Mountain National Park twice before in 2004, but both times the road over the top was blocked by snow (it was in May 2004)
Heading up to the park shows some of the bright yellow aspen trees. (in car shots by Karen with the GX200 - colour corrected for the tinted windscreen)
The colour is very intense when the sun catches them.
Particularly against a clear blue sky (14mm 2.8L)
The two shots above were taken not far from the Hwy34 entrance to the park.
It's Elk time, so there were also hoards of photographers standing around some areas, with big long lenses atop tripods.
A momentary diversion on the part of my assistant means we don't have any photos of them, but if I said 98% male, most wearing hats, many with beards, you can create your own picture...
The view from just above the tree line shows how far we've come. (GX200 DNG file with colours corrected in ACR)
As I said, photographers everywhere... :-)
Here (since I know my Mum likes to see at least one picture of me on each trip) I am, driving along at 12,000 feet
Note the graduated filter windscreen - continually reminding me why I find them seriously over used in a lot of people's landscape photography ;-)
Below, we see that Karen has indeed learned well from the 'Keith Cooper School of Landscape Photography' - Why get out of the car if it's too cold/wet/windy and you can get a good shot?
At the visitor centre, the snow poles give an idea of just how much snow can fall here (presumably they take in the flag when it snows)
The picture below was taken when I was here last time (May 2004)
The road then descends quite steeply and you are back in the forests
We're staying at Grand Lake, which has one wide main street, with boardwalks and lots of shops, many closing down for the end of the season at the end of this month.
Although there's lots of trinkets you can buy here, the general feeling is that you get a better class of trinket in Grand Lake than you do in Estes Park.
An excellent range of ice cream too
After dropping off our stuff, we had a bit more of a drive around
Where I did get out of the car to take a few more pictures...
It's a Nisan Xterra (or Nee-san as I believe it's pronounced over here)
In this case, the trees are cottonwoods.
>> Next Day >>Grand Lake to Steamboat Springs
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