A landscape photographer's tour

Keith's travels in Colorado - April-May 2006

In 2004 Keith first took his then fairly new Canon 1Ds on a driving tour round the Rockies in the USA. This photo-diary covers a driving trip around Colorado in April/May 2006.

NEW -- Create your own customised A3 size wall calendar from some of Keith Cooper's photographs. Choose your own images for your own custom printed calendar - 12 months starting any month of the year. Choose from nearly a hundred images - many not yet in our main gallery.

This collection has been re-written to make it easier to follow than the original (big) web page. On my return to the UK , I wrote a more technical article about the photographic aspects as a follow up to my original "Keith's first all digital visit to the Rockies"

There are other photo travel diaries covering trips to:
Washington and Oregon in September/October 2007 and California/Oregon in April/May 2007

Note for visitors from Colorado - I had a great time, thanks! I do really like the place :-)

	Daily pages 27th April London-Denver 28th April South park 29th April Leadville 30th April Aspen 1st May Aspen 2nd May Steamboat Springs 3rd May Steamboat Springs 4th May Steamboat Springs 5th May Delta 6th May Gunnison 7th May Gunnison 8th May Gunnison 9th May Fairplay 10th May Pikes Peak and back to Denver
What's the weather like? National Weather Service radar	Weathercams (60 live cameras) What are the roads like?

Droplets of water at Fish Creek Falls

1/5000th second exposure.

Steamboat (3)

A lovely bright morning, enough cloud to make the sky look interesting in black and white (pure blue equates with a smooth grey sky - not want I usually want). Studying the maps had also found several locations worthy of exploration. Off I headed in the general direction of Yampa.

Unfortunately a relatively small rock in the road (from a nearby cliff) exposed one of the difficulties of low profile tyres and alloy wheels -- fortunately I was able to pull over and change the wheel (to one of those horrid 'spacesaver' tyres)

alloy wheel

With alloys, you can't just hammer out a dent

hole in wheel

Broken wheel

Ho, hum, it's off to the rental people to replace the car. Unfortunately, since it needed to be returned to Denver, I ended up with a bigger car. Why unfortunately you ask? Well the Mercury Grand Marquis is a big car, and has all the delicacy in handling and performance I'd associate with a river barge. This is perhaps not the vehicle I'd choose for exploring mountain passes :-)

On the way back from the 'bump', the sky decided to get even more interesting, just to remind me what could have been :-(

Shed and tree

The rocks in the background are the core of an old volcano - there are several such outcrops near Yampa.

Image converted to black and white using channel mixer, to emphasise sky.
See Introduction to digital black and white article for more info. When working up an image like this as a print I'll pay considerable attention to getting the tonal balance right for the print I want. It's difficult to show on the web, but I'd want to emphasise the cottonwood tree and the shack a bit more. I'd also do a bit of dodging and burning to show the different slopes on the hill. Paying attention to this allows you to lead the viewers eye through the composition in a clearer fashion.

Back in Steamboat I spotted this sign.

prayer day

Surely not? No, the rock incident had happened earlier that morning :-)

27th April>>28th April>>29th April>>30th April>>1st May>>2nd May>>3rd May>>4th May>>5th May>>6th May>>7th May>>8th May>>9th May>>10th May