Long, Long Day

The day after the wedding in Centennial (suburb of Denver) I loaded up my camera gear into my trusty little rent a car and headed west on I-70. I turned off in Idaho springs onto the Mt. Evans Scenic Highway. Climbing upward I saw quite a few aspen that were starting to turn. I stopped at the ranger station to pay and the ranger warned me of the high winds that day and told me where the Mountain Goats and Bighorns have been hanging out. I didn't see a single one! On the drive up it got cloudier and cloudier and wind was really blowing. Howling would be a better term for it. Once while getting out of the car to photograph the view the door was ripped from my hand. I stopped for a break at the Mount Goliath Natural Area and photographed a Bristlecone Pine. They are estimated to be between 800 and 2,000 years old. I was shocked to see a saw mark on the tree I photographed. When I arrived at Summit Lake I was quite happy to have my wool hat and gloves. It was a brisk 36 degrees out and there were little ponds of ice frozen. The wind was still howling and there was a guy on a bike coming downhill towards the lake that was having to pedal to make forward progress against the wind. The parking lot at the lake was full and I circled a bit until i could find a parking spot. I did a short hike to the Chicago Lakes Overlook before heading back down. coming back down it was quite a bit warmer and I stopped to photograph some aspen and the motorcycles that just love driving the twisty roads up here. I drove down into Idaho springs for lunch and then I headed west again on I-70. I went through the Eisenhower Tunnel. On a sidenote I left Colorado as a youngster the year before it was complete. When I used to ski at Loveland Basin we used to watch the big Euc off road trucks carrying rock out from the construction site from the chairlift. I drove to Silverthorne and purchased a couple of SD Cards for my camera.By then I was pretty tired and I pushed the drivers seat back and had a long nap in the sun. After I woke up I headed east on Highway 6 to Loveland Pass. I stopped to photograph the Aspens and the A-Basin Ski area. I was shocked to see that the lodge was finally undergoing renovations. For years and years now it has looked like a time capsule from 1970. At the top of the pass I stopped and took some customary tourist pictures and I went for a short hike uphill looking for some Pikas. I got one really nice image of one!. In winter the top of the pass is the drop off point for backcountry skiers and snow boarders. There is a huge bowl here that can be skied down to one of the last turns at the bottom of the pass. It's a great way to get some serious skiing in by either hitch hiking or trading off with a car and driver. After coming off the pass i went into Idaho Springs for an early dinner. I had a great sandwich from a local market and then I headed back up the byway. I stopped and dropped off most of my stuff at the Air BnB where I was staying.Nice place by the way. Then I headed up to see if i could catch a little of the sunset. my last image of the day was of my little rent a car which did a pretty good job of taking me out for a long, long day. God's love and blessings to all, chris All images were created with a Canon 7DmkII and a variety of lenses.

Beautiful Morning

I slept in this morning until eight o'clock. Ah, Saturdays! When I checked outside there was a break in the weather and a beautiful view to the fog shrouded Redwoods below. By the time I went downstairs grabbed my camera and back up the stairs the fog was rapidly closing in. Afterwards I grabbed a bird feeder and went out into the backyard. I set up a perch with a milo (Sorghum) seed head. Every year some pops up and grows in almost the same exact spot next to our patio from fallen bird seed. Milo brings me back some good memories from my childhood of seeing large fields of it growing on the prairies east of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. It was grown for cattle as there were many dairies and the large stockyard in Greeley, Colorado which was close to twenty miles to the east of where I lived in Loveland. You could always tell if there was an east wind due to the smell! After setting up the perch I settled into the photoblind and waited for the birds. There were a lot of Juncos and Hermit Thrushes. They both loved the milo but I only got some images of the Dark Eyed Juncos. When I was finished I stopped on the way back into the house and photographed hummingbirds for about ten minutes. What a beautiful morning. Merry Christmas to all, chris All images created with a Canon 7D and Tamron 150-600mm F5-6.3 Di VC US lens with a Manfrotto 190 XPROB tripod with a Bogen ballhead. #TeamCanon

Sign of Spring

One of the sure signs of spring growing up as a boy in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains was the call of the Western Meadowlark. On Saturday Lenore and I were serenaded by a Meadowlark from one of the refuge signs. There has to be a pun hidden in this somewhere? It was music to my ears and it brought back many memories of wandering through the neighborhood where I grew up imitating the Meadowlarks and having them call back to me. I can still do a pretty realistic call of one and surprisingly they still answer. God's light and love to all, chris Image created with a handheld Canon 7D in AV mode and a Tamron 150-600mm lens at309mm. ISO 800 F 5.6 at 1/6,400th of a sec.

Way Up High for Pikas

Day two of my trip to Colorado and Wyoming found me driving up into the rockies at 5:30 a.m. with my best buddy Dan Burke. My goal was to photograph Pika way up in the rockies and I wanted to be there at first light. When we reached the top of the pass at 11,991 feet the sun was just cresting the peaks to the east. We parked and when I stepped out of the car and it was pretty brisk I immediately went to the trunk of the car and grabbed a well needed warm sweatshirt for the trail. We slowly plodded up the trail looking for Pika . Wow, is it hard to walk at that elevation for a lowlander. I began having an anxiety attack and I had to stand for a good length of time to calm myself down. It takes awhile at acclimate to that elevation. After awhile I began to feel better and we started hiking up even higher. At 13,200 feet we began to hear Pika before we could see them. Soon I spotted several in the lichen covered rocks and we searched for a good spot to sit. One of the easiest ways to photograph Pika is to find out where they are and then just find a likely spot to sit and wait. The spot ended up being perfect. After about a half hour wait the Pikas started getting bolder and began coming down out of the scree (bunch of loose rocks) to feed. I was surprised to see that the Pika weren't gathering any plants at all. They were just eating and then running back up the scree to rest. Eventually I had one feed to less than three feet from me. It was so close that I couldn't focus on it. Not long after that all activity semed to come to a stop. It was good timing as it was getting too bright to photograph. On the way down I photographed a Mountain Bluebird and we spotted several Marmots one of which I photographed from a distance. We stopped in Idaho Springs for a well deserved lunch. We had awesome BBQ at Smokin Yard's BBQ. What a great way to finish off a morning. Thank you Lord for providing me this experience. God's love and blessings to all, chris

Taking What You are Given or Images are Where You Fnd Them

The second day of my trip to Colorado and Wyoming was a travel day. Starting off with airport food. Ham and cheese crepe. I spent the majority of my flight from San Francisco to Denver glued to the window of the aircraft watching the endless landscape slip slowly away beneath me. I have always been fascinated with both geography and geology so flying in a plane is never boring to me especially if I have a window seat. Upon landing I went through the mechanical steps of picking up my luggage and rental car. From there even though it was midday I headed west from the airport to one of Denvers best kept secrets Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. The arsenal is right in the shadow of the city. Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center. The site was operated by the United States Army throughout the later 20th century until it was closed in 1992. In 2011 parts of it were opened as part of a National Wildlife Refuge. It has an incredible diversity of wildlife. I drove the auto tour and photographed a bison and a view of the Rocky Mountains. When I was leaving the refuge I spotted a huge semi that must have been used by Ford Motor Company to tout its new Ford F150 Pick up. I then headed out into rush hour traffic to my good friend Dan Burkes house. When I arrived at his house I found a great fungi in his lawn which I promptly photographed. Many time images are where you find them.Oh my what a mixed bag of images! God blessings to all, chris

Textured and Framed

One of my favorite views as a child was of Longs Peak in the Rockies from our kitchen window. Longs Peak and its partner to the South Mt. Meeker dominate a good portion of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. They can be seen from a long ways out into the plains. While I was there recently I felt drawn to create an image for myself. This week with a lot of rain I had quite a bit of indoor creative time on my hands. I photographed a whole series of rock textures with a macro lens to use as frames and image textures. There are tons of free texture libraries available all over the internet but it's a lot more fun to create your own.Here is Long's Peak framed with some rock textures I created this week. God's precious light and love to all, chris

Flashback

Yesterday I was looking through my folders looking for a Pika image. In the process I went through and almost reedited my whole folder of images from a trip I made in Colorado the previous summer. Being away from the images from such a long period gave me a slightly different feel for what I was looking for in my original edit. I found several powerful landscape style images that I had previously overlooked as well as one rattlesnake image that was pretty strong too. My favorites were still the Pika, Marmot and Chipmunk images because I'm a sucker for small mammals. I can't count the times where I have passed up photographing elk and deer when there are small mammals around. Once camping with my friend Joe he commented. "There goes Chris with those darn squirrels and chipmunks again." Enjoy and God bless, chris