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A landscape photographer's tourKeith's travels in the Colorado Rockies - September-October 2008Through the Rocky Mountain National ParkEstes Park to Grand Lake over the 12,000 feet Trail Ridge road.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 27th September >>28th September >>29th September >>30th September>>1st October>>2nd October>>3rd October>>4th October>>5th October>>6th October>>7th October>>8th October>>9th October>>10th October>>11th October>>12th October>>13th October>>14th October Other travel blogs
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