Flowers in Golden, CO, October 17th, 2010.

 For this installment, I don't really have much to say, except that I like taking pictures of flowers, because they're the most colorful things in nature, and it's a nice challenge to not only capture the colors properly, but also to develop the shots in Lightroom, a program I'm still learning to use.

 World's Most Cooperative Bumblebee. Thanks, homey. The pictures above were taken in the community garden inside the historical park, along Clear Creek just west of downtown Golden.

 I was surprised to find so many colorful flowers, since this shoot was done at the beginning of October.

One of the biggest problems I'm having with Lightroom is figuring out how to get the photos to look the way I want them to, without blowing them out or causing a bunch of noise and aberrations. I think I'm probably still better with Photoshop for this type of editing, but Lightroom is going to be what I use going forward.

A post about being careful what you wish for...Keystone with Mike K, 12-19-2010

I wish for lots of things. And occasionally, The Universe grants me my wish, and it is good. However, as I've...matured...I've come to realize that you have to be careful what you wish for, because good fortune is often a breeding ground for compromise.

 Lately, I've been wishing for snow. I love the stuff, it's all fluffy and white and clean and it makes the world silent, a welcome reprieve from the noise in my everyday life. Sitting in the woods during heavy snowfall is good for my soul.

Today, I headed into the hills with the intent of doing some action shots of my friend Mike, who is a fantastic snowboarder, and one of my oldest and closest friends. We knew it was going to be a snowy day, but we didn't know it was going to be pounding snow all day. 

POWDER DAY! And this is where the trade-off began...

Meet Mike K, a world-class human with a world-class attitude towards life. Mike and I have been riding together for 13 years, off and on as my health has allowed.

Mike is a fantastic videographer as well, hopefully we can do some collaboration this winter and have a project to put forth in the spring. He's not as fierce as he looks, no matter how red his eyes are...

Our destination today was Keystone Resort, in Summit County, CO, and we were greeted today by about 9" of fresh snow. Delightful.

I learned some very important things today. First, shooting good photos in low, flat light is HARD. Sure, there' a lot of white out there, it's relatively "bright", but I would have benefited from a little more sun. I called God to ask but his receptionist put me on hold, listening to Styx's "Grand Illusion" on loop. I hung up immediately.

The second important thing I learned is, SNOW IS WET. Sort of a no-brainer, right? I thought so as well, but my dilemma today was that it was not only snowing like crazy, it was not particularly cold, so my lens, viewfinder, and LCD screen decided to fog up as soon as I pulled the camera out of the bag.

So I was mega excited about all the snow, I was CERTAIN I'd be taking awesome photos all day, but I wished too hard, and the fantastic conditions rendered my camera essentially useless after the first run. Be careful what you wish for...

I did manage to snap a few pics of Mike on the mountain before I put the camera in the backpack, though. This is on the backside of Dercum Mountain, on a run named "Mozart".

Whenever I pulled the camera out of the bag, I was in a hurry to get the shot and get the camera back in the bag so it wouldn't get wet. As a result, I didn't get much time to play with my aperture settings, to get my shutter speeds fast enough to capture crisp action shots. So these look amateur as hell, but the light was very low, very flat and I had to use a slow shutter speed, generally around 1/20 to 1/60 second. Better luck next time.

If I had it to do over again, I would have dressed Mike in a prison jumpsuit, so he would stand out a little better.

Above is the last shot I took on the mountain, before my lens fogged up. Mike tearing through the trees on the margin of the Mozart trail.

We spent the remainder of the day on the far back side of the resort in an area known as The Outback. What a joy in fresh powder, it's an entire mountain of tree runs and glades. I pulled the camera out a few times but the foggy lens refused to clear up, so I didn't get any shots back there, which is disappointing.

After a really good leg-burner that left my right leg quivering, we headed back to the lodge for some beers, and to watch the Broncos pursue the #1 overall pick in the draft. I let the camera dry out and de-fog while I drank an Avalanche Ale, then took it outside to capture some winter-wonderland shots from the deck. It was just after 2pm, and by this time the snow was really coming down hard.

At about 2:45pm, we decided it was best to hit the road to try to beat traffic. Heh. On a Sunday? Pffft.

We tried to go over Loveland Pass, but were thwarted; they closed the gates on us, right before we would have passed through them. Fuckers. I have driven Loveland Pass in storms as gnarly as this one, in a 1987 Toyota Tercel. My Pathfinder would have made it just fine. I can't speak for the dozens of other clowns on the road with us, but that's not my damn problem.

Anyways. We were forced back to I-70 through Silverthorne. We stopped at Burger King so I could eat, and I handed over the driving to Mike so I could eat. What came next was a 3 hour trip up the hill to the Eisenhower Tunnel.

If you're not familiar with this drive, let me fill you in. From Silverthorne to the tunnel, it's about 12 miles up a constant 6% grade, topping out at just over 11,000 feet. On Sunday evenings, every weekend warrior with a season pass and a car is on Interstate 70, trying to get back to Denver. Every 20 minutes, the tunnel is closed to allow the ventilation system to catch up, and bring the carbon monoxide level in the tunnel down to a safe level. This causes all kinds of havoc on the road.

Forgive the blurry image, we were moving and I was sitting on my window frame. These pictures don't really do justice to how backed up the traffic was.

As a snowboarder, I could not have asked for a better day on the mountain. I got to make countless powder turns, and spent the day with a good friend.

As a photographer, the conditions left much to be desired, but I learned a lot about shooting in heavy snow. Namely that it's a pain in the ass...

Arapahoe Basin in the Early Season

 I'm an avid snowboarder. Not the greatest snowboarder, but it's one of my biggest passions, so it's only natural that I'd want to capture as much about it as possible with my camera.

Snow is a challenging environment to shoot, but it's also a ton of fun because, on a bright, sunny day like this one, the colors seem to be a bit more dramatic and everything is lit up evenly. I will benefit immensely from the use of a polarizing filter, once I can pick one up, but all in all, I feel pretty good about the quality of these pics.

Since Arapahoe Basin was the only resort in Summit County that was open, and there was fresh snow the previous night, the place was pretty crowded and the lift lines were a sight to behold. It was a Friday; I would not have wanted to be there the next day. Thirty minute lift lines are bad enough.

 The above pic was taken at the top of the Black Mountain lift, which takes you half way up the mountain. What you're looking at is the top half of the front side of A-basin. The snow looks fantastic, but this portion of the mountain had not been opened yet. This is a really fun section, but as you can see, it's shaded in the afternoon (I think I took this shot around 2:30pm), so in marginal conditions, the light can be very flat and it can be difficult to see where you're going. It can also get remarkably windy at the top, so in the shade of the afternoon, the lift ride to the top, on that slow triple chair, can be...brisk.

 This is a portion of what is called The East Wall, a hike-in only section that's skull numbingly steep and is obviously for experts only. The couloir at the right of the picture is one of the more popular chutes on the East Wall.

 Above is just a random kid I saw sitting at the edge of the run. I liked the lighting on the trees behind him, so I asked if I could take his picture, and he obliged.

Below is a shot of the mountain on the other side of US 6, which you can hike to from the top of Loveland Pass. Some intrepid skiers made the trek that morning and were treated to the earliest untracked powder this state has seen since I started riding 15 years ago. That's one hell of a run, too.

 About halfway down the run, I came upon this roller that guys were just hucking themselves off of, so I parked it and started using the burst function on my camera, to take multiple shots of each rider as he jumped. None of this was staged, I didn't have a tripod so my shooting was very discrete. I wonder how much bigger they would have gone if they had known I was shooting?

 This is just a sampling of the shots, I chose some of the better ones but I probably took 150 pictures while I sat here. The jumpers kept coming, one after the other for about 30 minutes, and I was hoping I'd get some shots with two of them in the air at once, but they spaced themselves out well, which is the smart thing to do. If your buddy wrecks his landing, and you jump directly after he did, you wouldn't know he was lying there until you were in the air, rolling down the windows and bracing for a catastrophic landing. This roller drops off sharply, so the riders would just drop, I had about a 1 second window to capture them airborne.

The park was CROWDED, but I expected that one a day like this one, with every brah in Summit County on the mountain, on such a nice afternoon. It made the shooting much more prolific as well, and the caliber of riders was really good. They hadn't set up any jumps, just rails and fun boxes, but it was still a lot of fun to photograph these guys.

 I wish I could have shot more from this perspective above, but there were 150 riders milling about in a small area and I didn't want to get clobbered. As the season progresses I'll be able to take more interesting park shots, especially over at Keystone, which has a massive park complex.

  

This was an awesome day. Warm, sunny, and no wind at all. Wish they could all be that great...

A-Basin has one of the best bars I've been to at a ski area. The bar itself is small, but there are a bunch of big, round tables with nice, comfy armchairs around them. Perfect for throwing back a few after a day with your friends. The bar has great microbrews on tap (namely Avery IPA and Backcountry IPA), and bacon bloody mary's, poured strong. They have a mug club, which I had wanted to join but was already sold out...on day 5 of the season. Bummer.

Arapahoe Basin has always been a favorite of mine because it's one of the "locals" hills, so there are no condos, fancy restaurants, or trendy bars on site. They serve good food, though, like handmade pizzas, green chile, and breakfast burritos, and it's not wildly expensive. It's a breeze to get to as well, only about 50 minutes in good weather and traffic conditions (I live on the west side of the Denver metro area, and right off of I-70), if you're willing to drive Loveland Pass. Which I am, and actually prefer over taking the highway into Dillon and doubling back. People will tell you that Loveland Pass is dangerous, but I have seen far more accidents on the downhill approach to Silverthorne than I've seen on the pass, regardless of weather conditions. So what if avalanches routinely bury the road in heavy snows? Big deal....

A Comment About Criticism

As many of you who know me already know, I'm just starting out. I'm a guy with a Nikon D3000 and a love for the outdoors, and I have always wanted to capture the things I see so that I can share them with others.

I bought the camera in September and I've probably taken 3000 shots with it already, learning a TON along the way, but there's always more. More to learn, more to see, more to understand, and I'm keenly interested in knowing what people think of my shots, both from an aesthetic perspective as I'd get from the casual observer, to the technical and artistic thoughts and ideas that I'd get from someone with more experience than I have.

So please, if you're looking around here and you see something that makes you think, put those thoughts in a comment for me, help me learn. Do you think there's something I could have done better? Do you see a flaw that you know could have been avoided? Please, let a brother know!

November 2010: Clear Creek Canyon and Jones Pass, Clear Creek County, CO

This will be my first photo-story installment, an afternoon quicky excursion I took after work in late November, 2010. I've begun adding a watermark to the photos, because if you clowns are going to jack my images, you're gonna have to do a little work to be able to tell everyone they're yours. Bunch of scoundrels, the lot of you.

Let me start by saying that I'm kind of dense. I left in a hurry after loading the hounds in the truck, and forgot to grab my 55-200mm lens, so what you see here with the Bighorn Sheep is me just sort of letting the shutter fly. No real artistry, just grabbing some quick shots on the side of US 6, in Clear Creek Canyon.

That sounds innocuous enough, but I wasn't getting any shots that I loved from a distance, so I crept up and started taking shots from about 35 feet. Bighorns are normally pretty laid back, but I neglected one important factor: it's right, smack dab in the middle of the rut. Those rams are wound up real, real tight, looking to get laid and in no mood to suffer an interloper in their bidness. The first image is of the Alpha Ram of the group; he's standing in the very spot I was standing in just seconds before I took this shot. He thought that I was a dumbass for forgetting my zoom lens...and wanted to whisper his opinion sweetly into my ear.

The second shot was taken from the safety of my Pathfinder; I'm brave but I'm not stupid. This picture is a bummer to me, because the big ram on the far right was very badly injured, but I didn't notice it until I retreated to the truck. His left rear leg was broken in about 4 places, and he was really struggling. I couldn't get a decent pic of him with his leg showing, but I think both of us are OK with not looking at an animal's injury, especially when it's his death sentence. He had a radio collar on, thankfully, so I jotted the number down and gave the Division of Wildlife a buzz when I got home.

It was very, very cold that afternoon, and as I drove up Clear Creek Canyon, I was checking out some of the cool ice formations that had sprung up in the river. I spotted one particular set that was adjacent to a nice pullout. 

I was dealing with very low light, and I was so freaking cold by the time I got to the water's edge, I decided not to go back to the truck for my tripod. I wouldn't call it a huge miscue because my hands are quite steady, but you can see some movement in the background.

 I'd hate to fall into that. Or drive my car into it, as some chump will inevitably do this winter somewhere along this road.

I really had hoped for snowfall during this shoot, because at 9am that morning, they were talking about closing I-70, winter storm warning, blah blah blah. Missed it by a few hours. So I headed up to Berthoud Pass, but since the light was fading, I decided to turn off at Henderson Mine instead, which is at the base of Berthoud Pass. The road terminates about 100 feet past the mine, at a parking area which doubles as a staging area for a backcountry snowcat operation on Jones Pass, and old mining and stagecoach route that once led to Silverthorne, but now dead ends shortly after you reach the top. Through-travel is not possible.

The thermometer at the mine facility entrance read -10F, at about 10,500ft. I let the dogs out of the truck, but Layla was having none of it, she took a few steps and looked at me like I had 3 heads, so I let her back in the truck and kicked around with Linus for a few minutes. I'd imagine the wind chill factor put the temperature well below -20F, and I was wearing khaki cargos and an insulated flannel; not adequate for those conditions. I snapped off a few pictures, and headed for home. You can see in the last picture the snowcat road, heading off into the unknown. I hope to snowshoe down this trail later on this winter to try to find some ptarmigan, winter foxes, and maybe some moose, who recently moved over Berthoud Pass into this area.

This excursion was a 3 hour venture into the mountains to make some attempts at snowfall pictures, but I was thwarted by good fortune. I was happy to see that the snowpack is building rapidly in the Clear Creek Basin, because in the previous several years, this area has been lacking decent snowfall, especially early in the year.

This particular trip found me just pointing and shooting, with little effort going into my settings and making adjustments; it was just too damn cold to worry about that stuff. Up at Jones Pass it was all I could do to press the shutter, and I was concerned about the camera cooling off too quickly and forming condensation. So I hit it and quit it....

This should keep me busy for a while...

Man, I've been looking at some of the other blogs around here and there are some sweet layouts and designs, I am a decent graphic designer (re: hack with Photoshop and Illustrator), so I'll be looking to customize this page.

I'm always open to ideas and suggestions.

I figure I'll be putting together some photo-stories over the next few weeks, but they wont be very interesting to start out, since for the most part, I head out with the intent to take pictures, rather than taking pictures as part of another activity. But not always.

OK, since it's a photography blog, here's some pictures I took up at Willow Creek Reservoir in Grand County, CO, back in September:

I really should process these pics with Photoshop before I post them up, but whatever. I'll get to that later, I'm still trying to figure out this site and how all the stuff works. Stay tuned.