Colorado riverscape in black and white

I am really enjoying black and white photography this year.  I began in late winter, and continued into the spring, mostly because the colors are rather muted now.  Even today, when an azure sky was graced by fluffy white clouds, the black and white treatment looks fantastic. 

desert lizard

I love everything about this photo.  The angle of the light relative to my camera, the camera's height and angle, the bokeh in the foreground and background, the lizard's pose and position in the frame - all of it.

Too often people shoot small wildlife and flowers from above.  I prefer to get down low, much closer to the subject's height.  For this shot, I got as close to the lizard as he would let me (they spook easily), zoomed in to about 100mm, and held the camera down and away from me.  I've been shooting this way for a while, and am getting pretty good at knowing what's going to be in the viewfinder.  Even still, I'll take several shots to ensure one of them is a winner.

Colorado National Monument in black and white

We enjoyed a couple of nice walks in the Colorado National Monument this past weekend.  The feature known as Eagle Rock is a natural element to want to include in landscape photos.  As I walked along the trail, I kept my eye out for interesting features to include in the foreground.  I found a few, and stopped at them to take some photos.  But the real treasure was a gully, or wash, flowing away from the cliff wall.  Walking up the wash yielded several fantastic views and I got some great shots at each.

The view above, unlike the others, seemed to work much better in black and white than in color.  Maybe it was because of all the rocks in the foreground.  It's the only black and white shot from the day.

Spring is "mud season" in the mountains, and I'll be seeking out lower elevation hikes and desert outings for the next month and a half.

rain drops on plants

I should really invest in a macro lens, so I can get much closer to my subject.  Lots of rain last night made for foggy conditions today, but not foggy enough for the landscape photos I hoped to take by the river.  Instead I found this plant on the way back.  Unlike most of the others, which had some drops, this one was covered with them.  I positioned the tripod in several spots, each yielding both a different view and a different background.  This one was chosen for the great bokeh.

Spring rapids

The Crystal River dwindles to a flow of forty cubic feet per second in late winter.  Fueled by the spring melt, it surges to over two thousand cfs at its peak, usually in May.  Yesterday it was flowing at four hundred cfs when I set up my tripod to take this shot.  I still had the neutral density filter on the camera, as I was hoping to capture the "hidden falls" I discovered last year.  That had yet to start flowing, so I figured I would get what I could, despite the cloudy skies.  As long as the colors remain muted, I'll continue to convert to black and white.

A seasonal waterfall

I recently got a 4x neutral density filter, and wanted to try it out on the seasonal waterfall south of Redsone, Colorado.  The colors this time of year are rather muted, so I may be converting all of my photos to black and white with the channel mixer in Photoshop.

Landscape Photo Carousel

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Mt. Sopris on an early spring evening

Given its majesty and how well it looks in the late afternoon and evening, you would think that I had thousands of photos of Mt. Sopris.  I've got a few I really like, but the conditions have to be right for me to pull over on the way home from work and fire off a few shots.  Last night was one of those times when conditions were great. 

Instead of the hazy or snow-filled skies, or the boring cloudless skies of a really nice day, there were just the right amount of clouds surrounding the summit of this 12,950 foot peak south of Carbondale, Colorado.

The polarizing filter deepened the color saturation and brought out the contrast between the clouds and sky well.  I zoomed in a bit, using a 44mm focal length (66mm equivalent), and this morning cropped up from the bottom to finalize it.