Winter Riverscape in both color and black & white

The Crystal River, connecting Marble, Redstone, and Carbondale, Colorado, is one of my favorite and most photographed subjects.  It's especially appealing in the winter.  Here it is following the fist and only significant snow storm of the year.  We just received another, smaller storm, followed by very cold weather.  As soon as it's done snowing, I'll get outside with the camera.

Autumn Landscape Photography in the Colorado Mountainst

autumn reflections

black & white almost looks like infrared

tilt-shift autumn landscape

Driving home one morning, I pulled off the road near one of my favorite places, and spent an hour walking around and photographing the autumn colors. 

Very dry conditions for most of the summer has left us with near-record low flows in the Crystal River, and rather subdued colors in the aspen trees, and yet things are pretty spectacular. 

One reason I love this area is the fields of sagebrush in the foreground.  Just for the heck of it, and to show you different ways of looking at autumn landscape photography, I've included a black & white image and a tilt-shift image.

Foggy Summer Morning

I just love the chance to photograph fog.  The spring and fall are usually the times when such opportunities present themselves, but we've had two days of heavy rain showers (after a very dry couple of months), and the increased humidity, coupled with a slightly cooler evening, created some outstanding fog in the valley this morning.

Butterflies!

It's probably more a function of last year's high moisture levels than this year's dry ones that there are so many butterflies in Colorado. 

On many of the trails I've hiked this summer, the quantity of butterflies is striking.  Diversity is good too, as I've noticed at least five different species (there are probably more, but I'm not a trained lepidopterist).

To get the best butterfly photos, I found one needs to stand still near some flowers they appear to like, with your lens zoomed in to the longest focal length.  When they land on nearby flowers, begin shooting like crazy.  If they remain for a while, you can take the time to properly compose your image or wait for them to open their wings.

quaking aspen trees

four shots combined in one animated gif provide a little idea of how windy it was today:
http://picasion.com

Animated Landscape

Build animated gif I should find the winter version I did from this spot and compare them. Using much the same technique one would for a panorama, but creating an animated gif file instead of stitching into a single image, one can create "animated landscapes" like the one above.

Getting Small

When a friend and fellow photographer offered to let me try out his 100 mm Leica macro lens, I jumped at the chance.  I borrowed it for an afternoon and took it up Red Hill to photograph the lichen, moss, sage, and weathered wood in the pinon/juniper landscape there.  Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day:

Colorado winter landscape with river and mountain

Snowfall this year has been rather sparse, which makes walking easier, but also deprives me of the fantastic winterscapes (or winter snowscapes) I love to take. 

That doesn't mean I stop trying.  The warm sunny days make it great to be outside, and I usually bring my camera along with me.