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Rainbow over Crested Butte Mountain

Now that it’s finally summer in western Colorado the “monsoonal flow” of moisture has begun drifting up from the Gulf of Mexico, through Arizona into Colorado bringing us occasional afternoon showers and thunderstorms. We plan our outings this time of year to avoid these mid-afternoon storms preferring mornings and the hour or two before sunset for outdoor activities like family portraits and bike rides. The late afternoon storms frequently leave us with rainbows.

Photographing rainbows successfully requires a little gear. First, you need rain. Those of you who’ve played with the Cokin Rainbow Filter should remember this part and not try to use it when there’s not a cloud in the sky. Others will know what you’ve done and, (for all photographers), your technique should not be apparent to others.

Another key ingredient to rainbows is the sun. Because you need both rain and sun, brief showers are much more conducive to photographing rainbows than big storms lasting into the night. There are a couple of places in the U.S.A. where you can capture rainbows at night with a full moon and a waterfall. I tried this at Cumberland Falls in Kentucky a few years ago but the clouds rolled in about the time the moon came up so I didn’t get the “moonbow” and I didn’t get to sleep.

Another helpful bit of gear is a really wide-angle lens. The wider the better! A fish-eye lens is a wonderful rainbow tool allowing you to get both ends of a full rainbow. Using longer lenses works too, but you’ll have to settle for just part of the rainbow. The image above, “Under the Rainbow” was created with a special panorama camera that provides the wide field of view with a longer lens. This approach distorts the foreground causing what were straight lines to fall back into the photograph.

Having a subject or object to place in the frame with the rainbow is a major aid to composition and adds interest to the image. Even though most of us are happy with just capturing the rainbow, creating an actual photographic composition with a rainbow might just end up on someones wall. It helps a lot if you know the lay of the land and have pre-visualized your composition a little. Rainbows have been known to move along the horizon based on the angle of the sun. They also have a greater arc the closer they happen to sunset.

The final item is a polarizing filter. Rainbows really react to the use of a polarizing filter by either vanishing completely or having greatly intensified colors. So, if you’re photographing a landscape and a rainbow happens to show up and you want to make it go away, the polarizing filter will work wonders. On the other hand, if you’re photographing a landscape and you think the rainbow could use a little boost, the polarizing filter will work wonders there too. Keep in mind that these filters can become a little difficult to work with on wider angle lenses. They may vignette the corners of the frame and they will absorb a lot of light making your exposure time or aperture settings change.

So, like the Wailin’ Jennys sing in their awesome song “Storm Comin’”, don’t run for cover. Run for your camera when the storm’s coming. Have some fun chasing rainbows.

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Nurturing Pasque Flowers

Well, the wildflowers are upon us again! It’s always amazing to me how quickly we can go from frozen brown dirt to colorful hillsides. In less that two weeks time and with only four seventy degree days the landscape around Crested Butte has become dotted, if not carpeted, with an array of colors that would make Crayola proud. Even more amazing is that the quick change from spring to summer has left some of our spring flowers around as well. It’s pretty rare to have Pasque Flowers and Glacier Lilies still blooming when the Lupine and Columbine are starting to pop. But we’ll take it!

The Pasque Flowers above are among the earliest bloomers around these parts. They’ve  frequently gone to seed before the first of June but they offer the first promise of a colorful summer for those of us who’ve become tired of a white landscape.

I’m no flower expert as my wildflower photo workshop students will testify. I do keep track of what blooms where and when but I struggle with their names (both the flowers’ and the students’). Maybe it’s part of my visual nature. Anyway, Pasque Flowers only grow to about six inches tall and like a lot of our flowers, they close at night and won’t reopen until the sunlight hits them. Depending on their surroundings, you can find these flowers fully opened or closed depending on whether they’re in a sunny spot or the shade. This situation lends itself to the lighting apparent in the photo above, back-lit subjects against a dark, almost black, background. These two have just begun to open to greet the day. I think the Pasques are most attractive before they are completely open and having the light source (sun) illuminating the flowers from behind shows off the “hairy” nature of the petals as well as their transparency. They have a nice glow about them when photographed this way. Another advantage to the back-light approach is that it can help to remove distractions from the photograph since the distracting elements are rendered in deep shade. I think the leaning flower on the left gives the scene a little personality that two perfectly upright flowers would lack. When faced with an acre of flowers these are the types of decisions we need to make.

Creating effective photographs in the field is often about getting rid of the distractions. It’s a fact that I wish more photographers would embrace. Paring the image down to its essentials and being extremely aware of what’s going on in the corners of the frame are critical visual decisions necessary to create images others will enjoy. Today, with Adobe Photoshop, we have better tools for correcting mistakes made in the field but our images are far better if we do most of the “correcting” before the button is pushed. Besides, sitting at the computer “fixing” my photos isn’t nearly as much fun as being in the field creating new images.

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Bright blue lupine bloom below snow-covered Gothic Mountain.

OK! A little truth in advertising might be in order for this week’s image. It doesn’t actually look like this now. But it could. In fact, this photo of bright, fresh Lupine below Gothic Mountain was created on June 13th of 2010. It’s not unusual for us to receive snow in June even though most of us find it pretty annoying. It is unusual that the Lupine have not come into full bloom yet. There are only a few patches so far and a few Larkspur thrown in for some variety. Glacier Lilies and Mountain Beauties are in full bloom if your eyes are good enough to see them.

This year’s heavy snowfall and a very cool May means that the flowers will be arriving a little later this season. But they will come and they should be amazing for the same reasons they’ll be a little late. These events are certain to provide a truly spectacular display just in time for the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival from July 11-16. Once again, I’ll be teaching some of the finer points of wildflower photography every morning during the festival. Four different classes ranging from close-up and macro techniques to incorporating wildflowers into larger landscape images will give every level of student plenty of learning opportunities. The 4×4 back-country adventure may be a bit challenging since there is still a ton of snow in the higher mountain valleys. We may not be able to venture as far out as we would like but great images will be made wherever we go.

I’m excited to offer a new class this year as well. It’s called the Wildflower Master Class and will be more about fine tuning exposure, composition, lens selection, selective focus, etc. to come away with a few “killer” photos suitable for your walls. This class is only open to 5 students so if you’re interested you need to sign up today with the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. I just checked and there is only one place left for this class but most of the others still have places available. Maybe a wait list is in order! You did know that Crested Butte is the Wildflower Capital of Colorado didn’t you?

Thanks for enduring the shameless self promotion this week. It won’t happen again any time soon. Since I’m on this path I may as well plug the Colorado Fall Color workshop that J.C. Leacock and I put on at the end of September. We’re still working out the details but it will happen the weekend of Sept. 30-Oct. 2. We’ll be spending time on the world famous Kebler Pass as well as some “secret” places that offer amazing fall colors and mountain landscapes. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll make sure to get you the details. See some of my sample images at Images Colorado. Thanks again for enduring the promotion. Here’s another photo for getting this far.

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Tiny Mountain Beauties bloom early in the mountains of Colorado

I’m not really known as an architectural photographer. In fact, I spend a lot of time trying to find scenes without any buildings in them at all. It’s not just buildings I try to avoid. “Things of Man” in general are enough to make me search for other subjects. Although the natural landscape is my usual subject, I will attempt to create images when provided interesting views of almost any subject.

A couple of years ago I spent a few days in downtown Denver, Colorado attending a conference for planning officials. I ended up staying at a hotel a couple of blocks from the Colorado Municipal League offices called The Burnsley. When I checked in I was asked if I wanted a “mountain view” or a “city view”. When I replied that I wanted the city view the clerk seemed shocked. I have a mountain view every day. I thought something a little different would be good for me. It was!

My room was on the third or fourth floor of the nine floor hotel. Each room had a large balcony overlooking whatever “view” you chose. The first evening I spent the sunset and twilight time on my deck photographing the downtown scene in both traditional and panorama formats. What attracted me to the scene was the office lights illuminating the buildings, the slight remaining light in the sky and the dome of the State Capitol Building. If any of these elements had been missing I don’t think the photo would have been very successful.

After making photos the first night and performing a quick edit I realized that the view would be better a little higher. There were quite a few trees, utility poles, and power lines in the photos from the first night which were pretty annoying. Figuring I had nothing to lose I approached the front desk staff to see if I could use a top floor balcony for an hour or so the next night. They were pretty reluctant but finally agreed when I told them that I would pay for the room if anything was disturbed. The view from the ninth floor was really dynamic. All of the bothersome trees and power lines were now out of the scene. The sky was a little more interesting the second night as well. I think the high contrast between light and dark elements that dominate the view provide a lot of visual excitement, especially the bright Capitol dome. A more subtle contrast in shapes is key though. The curved shape of the dome seems to yell “look at me” against the strong vertical lines of the surrounding buildings. In fact, the Capitol dome offers the only curved lines in the entire scene. It’s this contrast of form coupled with the luminance levels of the dome that force your eye to that part of the photograph. This arrangement was done on purpose to provide a more interesting scene and to keep your attention in the photograph just a little longer.

So, what do you think? Should I take up architectural photography or stick to the natural landscape? I would probably have to move to a city or at least visit them more than once a year to do the architectural thing. Either way, it’s fun and challenging to step out of my personal box and try something new.

Along those lines, I stumbled on a website you should check out. It’s called Craft and Vision and offers E-Books on photography and the creative process at prices you just can’t pass up. I purchased four of them and will include my thoughts on later posts.

Have a great week!

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Spring Snow on Whetstone Mountain and Cold Spring Ranch.

Spring snow is a love/hate sort of thing. It keeps us from doing the stuff we want to do outside in the footwear we’ve been missing since September. It means we have five different types of coats hanging on the hooks by the door. It means we finally have to sit down and write the blog to keep from going crazy. But when we get enough snow to cover the brown snow, bare brown dirt (mud), reconstituted dog poo, bare tree branches and mountain tops it really can be quite lovely. Trust me, it’s way better when this happens in April than it is in the middle of May, but what are you going to do?

A few years ago (in April) we got one of these spring snow events. It amounted to about six inches overnight with clearing skies the next morning. Since lots of snow had already melted (that year) we could drive some of the rural roads that had remained un-ploughed for the past eight months. So I ventured out to see what there was to see.

One of my favorite places in Gunnison County, Colorado is an area we call Brush Creek. That’s not a really good description but let’s just say it’s easy to get to and not far from home. That’s important because if you spend a bunch of time and gas going somewhere that you hope will be nice, and it isn’t, you’re really bummed out for the rest of the day. So I head over to Brush Creek. The road just past the Cold Spring Ranch offers about the best view back to Whetstone Mountain that there is. An added bonus is the old ranch house and the barns and other outbuildings supporting the active cattle ranch. Cover everything with a half-foot of snow and you have a pretty nice scene. Add some low-hanging clouds and it’s becoming spectacular. Lots of depth, texture and atmosphere is making a really beautiful sight. I make some pictures.

A while later I’m editing images and I run across these spring snow photos. They’re just not quite right but I can’t quite get what’s wrong. A few months later we cross paths again…same thing. The excitement of the scene just isn’t in the photos. (This happens a lot) About a year later I was “messing” with a technique to convert color images to black and white. It’s a process that sounds pretty simple but like most things done well, it’s not as simple as it looks. So, I was looking for an image to play with and I ran across the Whetstone shot and decided to give it a try with this “new” conversion technique. WOW! Until I eliminated the color in the image I had no idea what it’s “problem” was. Then it was really obvious. In the original color image the sky was bright blue but everything else was essentially black and white. The blue sky (as much as I’d like to see one today) was really obnoxious and distracting. Sometimes less is more. This was one of those times.

I hope you like “Whetstone Mists”. It’s one of my favorite photographs of a typical but vanishing part of the beauty of the west. It is available in a variety of sizes but would look great over your fireplace (large).

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A Hand-Shaped Cloud Catches Half a Moon.

Sometimes stuff just happens! You’re chatting in the driveway with your neighbor while you’re supposed to be taking out the trash and, “Oh look, that cloud is catching the Moon”. So, you hurriedly say good-bye to your neighbor who is still wondering what you were talking about and you grab your closest camera. Since the red cloud is a result of the sun which has already set you know you don’t have much time. The closest camera was the Canon G9 “point and shoot” which usually lives in my truck. By the time I had the camera in hand the cloud had moved. Now I’m chasing a cloud/moon juxtaposition through my neighborhood trying to make pictures while the cloud gets darker and darker and less and less red. This whole display and photo session lasted maybe 3 minutes. There weren’t many opportunities to get distracted.

I’m not sure the photo is all that interesting to anyone else but I kind of like it. Since I’m starting to prepare for the upcoming art season I thought I’d throw it out there and see If I get any comments. Each spring I go through the images I’ve taken over the past year to see if there was anything I missed and to search for new offerings I’ll need to print, mat and frame. This annual exercise gives the photos time to rest and settle. It sounds weird but I’m usually excited about my photos immediately after they’re captured. If I’m still excited 6 months later then maybe some other people will find them exciting too. It doesn’t always work this way but almost every time I print an image a day or two after it was taken I end up giving it away or putting the print in the “sale” basket. I know other artists go through this too. Especially photographers! I’ll bet it’s a result of the digital technology which takes the time from shoot to print down to a couple of hours if not faster. Back in the “film days” we had to finish the roll, take or send it to a lab, wait to get the pictures back and then edit our work. The excitement delay was built into the technology or lack of technology. Ah, the “good old days”.

I do love the digital technology we enjoy in photography these days. We have so many more tools at our disposal to fine-tune our images than we ever had with wet darkrooms. It’s actually possible to control elements of the photograph we couldn’t even imagine changing 15 years ago. That’s not to say the tools are always used well or the “vision” for the finished artwork is credible. I’m just saying that It’s great to have tools and controls we used to dream about.

See you next week!

This just in….

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Red Sky at Morning

Sold this week from a new art hosting company www.fineartamerica.com . You can view my images with them at www.dusty-

I love the work of the Impressionists. Their ability to reduce a scene to line, form, color and texture is amazing. To simplify a scene to these elements and maintain the emotional response is, to me, high art. As a photographer I frequently get lost in the details of photographic representation. When that happens the colors, line, texture and motion within the scene are usually lost to clarity, sharpness and detail. When I take my glasses off and look at the image out of focus it looks more interesting than with those sharp details.

Adobe Photoshop offers lots of filters to attempt to make a photo look like a painting, sketch, watercolor or some other media. Most of these don’t work very well. I have spent hours trying to accomplish the Impressionistic look with little to no success. The problem could be in my seeing. Once a scene is seen in full detail I have a difficult time seeing it in any other way. It just looks wrong! There are other “Actions” available to try and achieve the look I’m after within software but I’m unimpressed so far. Perhaps using a program like Painter would help. Or perhaps I just need more patience. I’m sure the latter is true whether the software works or not.

I would prefer to accomplish this vision within the camera so I don’t need to manipulate the photograph in software. The software approach somehow seems fake to me. I think there is a lot to be said for achieving the vision for an image in camera rather than in software. That’s not to say that the Photoshop approach is invalid or even to say that I won’t use it. I’m just saying I prefer a more “organic” approach to creating my photographs. That’s also why I play with my Holga and Diana cameras and have experimented with Lensbabys. So far I haven’t had much success with any of those. Moving the camera, using homemade filters and playing with selective focus and other techniques have gotten me closer to the images I want. I don’t want the viewer to know (or care) how I created the image. The Photoshop approach always seems so “obvious” to me. Vision should never compete with technique.

“Spring #1″ is one of a very few Impressionistic images I have been successful with. How do you feel about it?

So, after checking emails and listening to NPR for a couple of hours I decided that it might be a while before I saw photogenic snow again. I decided to venture our to see what I could see. As warm as it was (right around freezing) I knew that the conditions would change rapidly as the day progressed. Running around town was a bit of a hassle because heavy snow causes the locals to drive and walk around town with no concern for their safety and, seemingly, without the use of their brain. It was time to get out of town!

After grabbing a McStop and a Pepsi I headed toward one of my favorite photography areas, Taylor Canyon. About 12 miles from town the Slate River Valley opens up to become broad ranch land. One of these historic ranches is host to these two Cottonwood trees with a tire swing. Wet sticky snow helped define the bare branches of the trees as well as the tire and its rope. Low lying fog helped diffuse the forms of the ranch buildings, corrals and trees in the distance. This element, I feel, is really important. Any more fog and the foreground trees and swing would have no “sense of place” with nothing apparent in the distance. Any less fog and the background elements would have been too well defined and distracting. I’ve photographed this swing before with poor results for both of these very reasons. The soft background elements and the sharp foreground elements work together to tell a moody story with an emotional feel. After working the scene for a while I continued up Taylor Canyon with nothing really catching my eye.

So, here’s where you come in. I need some help with a title for this photo. I hate trying to title my images. I end up with stuff like “Tire Swing in Snow”. This image seems to want something different…from you. What’s it going to be?

As an aside, I’m not much of a wildlife photographer but last week I stumbled upon a photographer who creates some unique and incredible images of African Wildlife. His name is Nick Brandt and you should check out his work. It’s Amazing.

As always, click on the photo for a larger view, leave a comment either here or on Facebook. Be sure to share with your friends and photographers. Thanks a bunch.

Mother nature can be a fickle woman. (I hope she’s not listening) She doesn’t always give us what we want. She doesn’t even always give us what she was giving us 5 minutes earlier. She definitely has a mind of her own.

As a nature/landscape photographer it’s best not to have a preconceived idea of what she’s going to give you when you go out to make images. Last fall I got a call from friend and wonderful photographer Dick Okell the afternoon he returned to Crested Butte. He had an idea for a photo outing with a very specific shot in mind. I liked the idea and chose to go along with Dick and his wife to the Brush Creek area south of Crested Butte. We were looking for a certain mountain peak to light up at sunset under the clearing storm. Hoping for a red sky and great backdrop we set up for our sunset shot about 20 minutes later. That’s when it started to rain. That’s when the mountain peak we were hoping to photograph completely disappeared behind low dark clouds. That’s when we got back into the car.

As the sprinkles came and went and the lightning began we hunkered down in the car to wait out the storm and catch up on stories from the past month. Dick and Beverly are wonderful company and we don’t really need a thunderstorm to enjoy each others company. A little bourbon would have even been better but our planning was pretty hurried for this outing. It’s good to have company to commiserate with when weather spoils your plans.

After a while I remembered that I had my Lightning Trigger in the bag I brought. I decided to give it a shot. The pun is intended and if you’ve ever used a Lightning Trigger you know that you’ll get a lot of photos of “nothing” due to the way the device works. It “sees” lightning in front of the camera, beside the camera, behind the camera, in the next county, maybe even lightning from yesterday. It’s not the most productive of tools but it can do things the human eye/hand can only dream of. It can trigger the camera shutter fast enough to capture lightning. Pretty cool!

So I did get a few images of lightning in a daylight situation that I couldn’t do without the trigger. Since there’s no telling where the lightning is going to strike the composition is a little wonky but hey, there’s a rainbow and lightning in the same scene. I kind of like this one. What do you think? It’s just another photography story of heading out to photograph one thing and coming home with something else. It happens all the time. It’s best to be flexible ’cause Mother Nature is a fickle woman.

This just in: The Denver Post reported that the Camera Obscura Gallery will be closing at the end of this month. I’m so sad. This was the most important photography gallery is the state of Colorado. It’s loss will be a substantial blow to Colorado culture.