morning light on mountaintops

The hour after sunrise and the one before sunset are often referred to as the "magic hours" because of the soft warm light cast by the low sun.  In the mountains, this time also means that many valleys will be shaded.  This is a great opporunity to use a graduated neutral density filter or create a high-dynamic-range (HDR) image.

The photo above was neither, as I pulled over on my way to work to capture the scene with a handheld camera.  With my tripod and camera manual in the truck, I hope to try some bracketed photos in the coming weeks, and see if I can turn them into HDR at home.

Icicle Bokeh

The icicles outside my bedroom window are always interesting, but tonight the idea occurred to me that they might take on a fantastic look at sunset.  I set up my tripod and camera just after 5pm, and took about eighty photos over the next forty five minutes.  This is one of the last photographs.

It was tempting to include the mountainside across the river, but I opted instead to have only the clouds and sky in my frame for most of the shots.

I think I'll rename and refocus this site on landscape and nature photography, as my website, Best-Landscape-Photography.com, is concentrating more on landscape photography.  Maybe the blog will attract a different audience that way.

Three more icicle photos, including one of the first, are on my flickr pages, where I have a landscape photograph from earlier in the day.

Winter landscape in black and white

The winter landscape is somewhat monochromatic, especially on cloudy days.  That's why black and white photography is a natural in this season.  I normally try to avoid shooting into the sun, but it worked out surprisingly well this time, with the glare off the ice highlighting the surface texture.

This photo was taken along the Crystal River, below Chair Mountain and McClure pass, between Redstone and Marble, Colorado.