Zion Subway: Click Twice to View Larger

Browse any internet photography forum and the majority of the landscape images will be of well-known iconic locations or common subjects.  A frequent criticism of landscape photography revolves around this fact, with critics observing that too many photographers pursue the creation of derivative photos of well-known locations, all while calling themselves artists, instead of seeking out more creative work.  This viewpoint has come to resonate more with me in recent months and I have been seeking to get beyond standard views of icons in pursuit of more personal work.  Still, some iconic locations do represent another increasingly important aspect of my pursuit of photography – placing more emphasis on enjoying the experience of visiting incredible places as an equally important result of a photography trip.  Icons have achieved their status for very good reason and experiencing some of those places for myself holds significant value, value that at times exceeds the value of pursuing creativity and originality.

I can vividly remember three particularly memorable images I viewed when I first took up landscape photography.  One is an original take an a little known location in Colorado’s San Luis Valley.  The other two are of icons – Badwater in Death Valley National Park and the Subway in Zion National Park.  At the time, I had not traveled much and in viewing these images, I felt the pangs of wanderlust for the first time in my life.  I wanted to – needed to – experience those places for myself.

Death Valley came quickly and I visited Badwater within about six months of seeing that memorable image.  I fell in love with Death Valley instantly and have returned at least once a year since that time to explore the park – both iconic and off the beaten path locations.  Visiting the Subway has been more elusive.  This fall, I finally ended up in Zion with a permit for the Subway and two good friends who were willing to come along, even though they have both visited and photographed the location previously.

Given my goal of creating more personal work, why visit this location and spend hours photographing the area only to create derivative images that are almost exact copies of hundreds that have come before?  Because sometimes photography is about conveying and documenting an experience that is important to me and sometimes it is about the creative pursuit of more original images.  Sometimes these pursuits overlap and sometimes, in the case of visiting and photographing icons, they do not.  In the case of visiting the Subway, the experience is what I was seeking first and the photographs are a benefit.  Now, I have my own images to bring me back to that day – the ruggedness of the hike, the feeling of arriving in the incredibly cold and surprisingly sterile yet still magical Subway, the interesting conversations, the slips and falls, the funny moments, and everything else that made that day quite memorable.

I will happily add this image to my personal favorites knowing that it is no more creative or original than any other images from this place and I’m okay with that.  This photo represents something I have been seeking since I first saw that photo of the Subway years ago, thinking at the time that I would probably never actually get to see it for myself.  To be fortunate enough to visit and experience this place, and hundreds of  similar ones in the intervening years, is more than enough for me, even if the result will never rise to the level of art.

One way to get better photographs is to be better prepared.  For landscape photographers, this often includes things like studying images to see what has been captured in a given location, reviewing maps, considering weather, identifying sunset/sunrise/moonset/moonrise times, taking an amble through Google Earth, and developing concepts for potential images in advance.  And sometimes, one little oversight can toss all that preparation out the window. 

I recently returned from a brief trip to the high and rugged San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado, where we hoped to do a multi-day backpacking trip that I had been planning all summer.  The trip started out on a down note.  As we drove into Montrose, which is almost six hours from my house, I had a moment of panic.  Someone I follow on Facebook lamented about a recent experience in which they hiked five miles into a scenic location for sunset only to realize that they left their flash cards in the car.  I mentioned how frustrating that would be, had a little laugh, and then panicked.  My tripod was in the back of my car, sitting in my driveway almost six hours away.

Our planned trip was starting to look like it would be miserable because of a developing forecast for almost nonstop rain.  I had been waiting all summer to get to a place I had been dreaming about visiting and photographing for a few years. It was all falling apart.  Feeling dejected, with my new $40 Radio Shack tripod in hand, we headed to the closest place to camp for the night, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

After setting up camp, I headed off to photograph the last of a dark and moody sunset.  The new tripod would barely support my camera and I decided to give up.  I stopped at an overlook just to check it out and serendipitously ran into another photographer I know, Bret Edge, who was on the last day of his trip.  He very generously offered to let me borrow his tripod for the rest of my trip.

With the weather forecast still looking like solid rain and the tripod-related delay making it challenging to complete the planned backpack at an enjoyable pace, we decided to visit some new places instead.  One of these places included the Gold King Basin, a basin outside of Telluride that sits right near treeline.  With only a few breaks in a grey overcast sky all day, I did not expect anything for sunset that night.

The western third of the basin is entirely open to a view of the valley below.  This geography means that a cloudy sky with a clear horizon can equal a spectacular light show.  With the sun nearing the horizon and rain still coming down, a tiny gap allowed the dark stormy clouds overhead and the peaks of the basin to turn a brilliant red.  This light lasted for about five minutes and was gone as fast as it came.  What had been a continuous sprinkling rain turned into a downpour before I could get back to my tent on the other side of the small lake.

I happened to be on the east side of the lake in a field of wildflowers, meaning that my only option to capture a decent photograph of the unfolding scene was to run down a rocky hillside to the shoreline and capture a few images with a silhouette of trees along the western horizon.  While photographing the lake, I was still able to catch a few glimpses of the incredibly vibrant red light illuminating the high peaks behind me.  This was one of the most incredible displays of light I have seen.  I know that I did not walk away with an incredible image of that evening’s sunset, but I did come away with something that I like.

In the Montrose Radio Shack parking lot the day before, I blurted out, “Well, why in the hell am I here if I do not have a tripod.”  Sometimes, it is too easy to forget the main reasons I pursue photography in the first place – because wilderness and natural places are healing and rejuvenating, and because experiencing incredible places enriches my life.  Being able to capture incredible moments like this one is a benefit of photography, but is not the driver for visiting these places.  This particular evening was a good reminder that even if I ended up without a tripod, witnessing this moment in nature would have been enough.

Pawnee Buttes in Eastern Colorado

Stephen Dickey, author of a great new blog on landscape photography, www.CapturingTheLandscape.com, recently asked me to write up the story behind this image. Here is an excerpt from the full post:

This area features small rolling hills, colorful badland formations, one of the few intact tracts of shortgrass prairie in the US, nesting birds of prey, and prolific wildflowers in the summer.  The buttes are the main attraction for the small number of visitors, with hiking trails to explore areas that are accessible for most of the year.  During my first visit to this location as a child, some 20 years ago, the region was dotted with an occasional farm but the area around the buttes was generally untouched.  During my last two visits, an increasing number of electricity-generating windmills have been erected on the surrounding land and there is at least one natural gas well in clear view from the location where I took this image.  While the buttes themselves are protected, development, in my mind, has encroached far too closely on this area that deserves more extensive protection.

You can read the whole write-up, including some technical information about the photo, here.  I recommend a stop by Stephen’s photo gallery website and his new blog – a lot of inspiration in both places.

Just a quick reminder that you can also join me at Google+, on Facebook, or on photo-sharing site 500px.

Path to Blanca - Final Version

Whenever I post b+w and night photos, I get a lot of questions about my processing techniques.  Since I have found these kinds of tutorials to be helpful, I thought others might find it helpful if I put a few of these together myself.  Here, I walk you through, from start to finish, the processing of one of my images b+w images, Path to Blanca.  This image represents one of my more straightforward and simple conversions, making it fairly easy to describe my process here. 

I took this image on a cold January evening at the San Luis Lakes in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Here, Blanca Peak (14,345 ft) rises over the San Luis Valley and the frozen San Luis Lakes.  When I took this image, I knew I wanted to convert it to b+w.  At the time I clicked the shutter, I knew that I wanted to bring out the contrast in the ice, accentuate the strong leading line, add significant contrast to the peaks, and bring out the drama in the streaking clouds.  This processing would fit the experience of that night and the feeling I wanted to convey – a harsh, cold, and dramatic environment.  About 90 percent of the time, I know I want to convert and image to b+w when I take it.

I love processing b+w images because I can take an image to a completely different place from where it started.  By the fact that they contain no color other than black, white, and shades of grey, b+w images are by their very nature unrealistic.  Since they start as unrealistic, pushing such images allows for a lot of creative freedom.  For my b+w images, I typically process an image to achieve strong tonal contrast with some deep blacks, some white whites, and some (to a lot of) drama.  I process all of my b+w images manually using Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS4, typically using levels, curves, and my favorite tool – luminosity masks.

Basic tech info for reference: 5D Mark II, 17-40 lens @ 17 mm.  f/16, 30 sec, ISO L (for maximum cloud movement).

Overview of My Process

My image processing steps are iterative.  I know where I want an image to end up, but the steps to getting there are fluid.  I will often start with global changes, make many small adjustments to different parts of an image, make a significant change, and them make a few more small change based on that last major change.  This image is a good example.  I made a few smaller changes and then added a levels adjustment to bring in some drama.  This resulted in the need to do some dodging to bring back some lightness in one part of the image.  I go with the flow and course-correct along the way.

First, I am not a Photoshop expert and likely do things very differently than the “proper” way.  Please take this into consideration – my way may not be the best way, but it works for me.  Overall, this is how I approach processing for b+w images:

• Start with a clean raw file. I use Lightroom to adjust the horizon, fix chromatic aberration, remove any distortion, and set the exposure (fix any blown highlights, adjust the blacks to taste, etc).  I much prefer the spot healing brush in Photoshop, so I save the removal of dust spots for the first step in Photoshop.  Pushing the contrast in an image will often bring out even more dust spots, so I typically remove them both at the beginning and end.
• Balancing tones and light. First, I make small adjustments to help better balance the tonal relationships in an image.  I almost always start with luminosity masks to adjust the lightest and darkest tones to increase the tonal range.  If you are not familiar with luminosity masks, you can learn more from Tony Kuyper’s excellent and affordable tutorials and Photoshop actions (www.goodlight.us).  The basics: a luminosity mask allows you to selectively adjust tones within an image using a curves adjustment and a mask that allows your adjustments to the curve to only apply to certain tones in an image.  The mask is self-feathering so you are able to get very fine selections of small parts of a scene, based on tone.  For example, you can use a luminosity mask to select only the brightest tones of an image and then you can use a curves adjustment layer to brighten or darken just those tones.  I used luminosity masks to brighten the light tones in this image while leaving the dark tones alone.  These same kinds of fine adjustments would be really difficult without luminosity masks.
• Adding drama. After making small adjustments to the tonal relationships, I add the drama near the end.  I typically use a levels adjustment to add drama by bringing in the black and white points and then adjusting the midpoint, typically to make the midpoint darker (the midpoint is the middle slider in the levels adjustment control).  I also use curves and other techniques, but generally try out a levels adjustment first.
• Dodge and burn. Near the end of my processing, I typically add some dodging and burning to add final balance and drama to an image.  This process, for example, might be used to darken the edges of an image or add balance between the top corners of an image.  At this point, I have typically completed all major changes before this stage and am just fine-tuning and balancing light.
• Clean-up. Even though I typically clean up dust spots at the beginning of processing an image, b+w processing almost always brings out many more as you push the contrast in an image.
• Toning. I have started toning some of my b+w images to give them a slightly different feel.  While I did not add any toning when I initially processed this image, I added a slight bluish cast to the final image presented here.  (The toning option is available in the Black and White adjustment layer panel at the top – click “tint” and then choose a tone.  I always go with a VERY subtle tone and almost always use blue – here, I used 245, 248, 254).

Path to Blanca: Start to Finish

Here are the steps I used to get to the final image, with screen shots of my steps along the way.  Please note that you probably need a properly calibrated monitor to see some of the adjustments.

Raw File and Initial Adjustments (click on the image TWICE to see it larger)

This screen capture from Lightroom shows the raw file straight from my camera plus the initial adjustments that I made in Lightroom.  If I plan to use the colors in a file to manipulate contrasts, I do not convert the image to b+w in Lightroom, instead leaving the conversion for Photoshop.  Here, the color tones are similar so I knew that I would be adjusting the tones based upon tonal contrast in Photoshop and therefore made some initial adjustments in Lightroom and converted it to monochrome before heading into Photoshop.  Note: It is generally a better practice to convert to monochrome in Photoshop to maintain the flexibility of manipulating tones based upon color.  Adjustments included: reducing the exposure, adding contrast in the tone curve, and applying the lens correction feature to fix the wide angle distortion (as seen on the horizon).

Next, brought the image into Photoshop and started making some local adjustments.  First, I used a luminosity mask to brighten the brightest tones on the sky.  Again, I am not trying to make final adjustments at this point, so the changes here are quite subtle.  Instead, I am working to better balance the tones and will exaggerate those differences in a later step.  Here is a screen-shot of the luminosity mask that I used.  I used a curve to lighten the brightest tones in the image.   This mask allows the adjustment to show more fully in the lightest spots and is totally blocked in the darkest spots.

Luminosity Mask - the curves adjustment affects the lightest tones the most and leaves the black tones as they are.

This screenshot shows the result of that adjustment.  There is now a small amount of additional contrast in the sky.  This is a subtle change that I will exaggerate later.

The image on the right shows the result of the curves adjustment to the lightest tones. Although subtle, you should be able to see that there is now more contrast in the sky to be exaggerated later.

Next, I used another luminosity mask to adjust the lightest tones in the foreground and a few places in the sky.  Here is the mask.

Again, I am selectively adjusting the lightest tones to add more contrast. The curves adjustment is applied most heavily to the lightest areas and the black areas are unaffected.

Here is the result.  Again, subtle changes that add more contrast to the file.

Here, the tones in the ice on the right are lightened as a result of the last step.

Now that I have made some subtle changes to the file to better balance the contrasts, I am ready to exaggerate the contrasts with a dramatic adjustment.  Here, I used a levels adjustment to bring in the black point, bring in the white point, and darken the image overall by adjusting the midpoint.  This adjustment significantly lightened the lighter tones, significantly darkened the darker tones, and added some moodiness to the image by darkening the mid-tones.   Overall, I am very happy with the result of that adjustment, but it had the unintended consequence of darkening the foreground ice a bit too much.

Here, I used a levels adjustment to exaggerate the subtle changes I made in the last few steps. Click for a larger view.

To finish the image, I do a little dodging to bring back the lightness in the foreground.  The processing also brought out a lot of dust spots so I cleaned those up.  I also added a toning layer to add a cold feeling, resulting in this final version (the compression in saving for web is doing no favors for the foreground).

Path to Blanca - Final Version

Most of my b+w images take about two to three times the number of adjustments I described here and they take some time to process and refine.  While I could do all of this more quickly with software like Silver Efex Pro, I like the manual process and the control I have over each step.

I hope you found this to be helpful in explaining one way to get an image from a raw file to a b+w image.  If there are any images from my collection that you would like to know more about for future tutorials, please let me know in the comments.  Also, please let me know if you have any questions or comments about the process described above.

Unfortunately, the only photo of me and the Loka is this one of me mocking a sign in Oregon (yes, I act like a child sometimes...). Still shows how the pack generally fits.

Nearly every backpack I have owned has been seriously uncomfortable.  There has been no love with these packs, just a lot of cursing bad design, sore shoulders, and feeling like I am carrying a bag of rocks on my back.  Because I over-analyze any purchase, I have continued to wear uncomfortable packs, despite their ability to influence my mood and enjoyment of a trip.  After two years of pondering the purchase of a new backpacking pack and analyzing the decision to death, I finally bought a new Osprey pack last summer.  I was shocked that it was so comfortable because, I was convinced, there is nothing such a as a comfortable pack.  If a comfortable backpacking pack exists, maybe a comfortable camera backpack exists, too…

After reading many positive reviews of F-Stop camera packs, I decided to give one a try.  I purchased the F-Stop Loka with a medium Internal Camera Unit and – wait for it – love it!

Summary

Overall, the F-Stop Loka pack is a perfect size for my needs, carries my mix of photo gear very well, and is very comfortable.  Since I got the pack in early May of this year, I have worn it on hikes totaling about 35 miles in all kinds of different conditions – raining in the Colorado mountains, freezing on the Colorado prairie, along the Oregon coast, in the Columbia River Gorge (raining again), and in warm weather in Moab.   So far, the construction seems very solid and I expect it to last as well as any other well-made pack.  I do wish that F-Stop made a women’s version by modifying the hip belt and the shoulder straps (more on that later).  That would make it a nearly perfect pack for me.

A Brief Tour

There are a lot of photos of the F-Stop Loka available on the internet.  Since I have no skills when it comes to product photography, I am sticking to sharing snapshots to show features that I wondered about when I bought the pack.

Here, the back of the pack is open and the medium ICU is closed. Excuse the helper in the photo.

Here, the back and the ICU are both open, with the front of the pack lying on the ground

My medium ICU filled with gear. I could easy add another smaller lens.

Here, you can see the amount of room available from the top, with the ICU in the bottom of the pack. The visible mesh pocket is the pocket I mention below as being prone to emptying itself.

Pros and Cons

Since there are a number of comprehensive reviews already available, I will focus mostly on a few points that I have not seen covered by other reviews or are particularly important to me.

Favorite things:

• Overall, this pack is VERY comfortable.  However, I wish they made this pack with some customizations for women (see below).
• The layout that I have selected for my ICU allows me to easily leave any of my lenses on my camera body when I put it away.  Every other bag I’ve owned has had a configuration that worked either for short or long lenses, but not both.  This flexibility is a huge improvement.
• This pack seems quite well made and I think it will last, even though I am hard on my gear.  This is a good thing, given the price of $279 for the pack and an ICU.
• I really like the way the pack opens from the back and lays flat for easy access.  I leave my ICU covered but unzipped when it is in the pack.  With the ICU unzipped, I have found that it is really fast to unzip the back of the pack and access my gear.  I can only think of one scenario in the last year where this would have been a cumbersome set-up – standing in thin layer of salty water at Badwater in Death Valley where I had no place to lay out the pack.  Otherwise, this system works really well for quick access in almost all scenarios.
• The pack is the perfect size for me for dayhiking and I expect that it will be large enough for me to use in the winter for snowshoeing and winter dayhiking.
• The overall best thing about this pack is that it was clearly designed for outdoor photographers.  The design is logical and deliberate.
• While the Loka is not well-suited to carrying a laptop and ICU as an everyday solution, it did work well for carrying my camera gear and 17” laptop on a plane.  It was not comfortable, but it worked.  The Loka also fit perfectly in the overhead bin.  Since I sometimes bring a laptop but then do not carry it around with me, this arrangement works well for me.
• There are multiple ways to strap on a tripod, snowshoes, a jacket, or other gear.  This lends to the pack’s flexibility, which I like a lot.
• The Loka fits a water bladder (an interior sleeve is extra – I bought it but have not used it yet) or bottles.

Things I don’t love as much:

• This pack is really comfortable with two exceptions.  It is not made for a woman’s body (see next point) and the back panel gets a little hot.  Other reviews have commented about how the Loka fits quite close to your back.  Overall, I really like that fit but it does mean that my back gets pretty warm when I am hiking.  This is not a deal-breaker for me but this could bother others.
• Even though I know nothing about engineering a pack, it seems like alternative straps could be added to fit a woman’s body much better.  First, I would prefer contoured shoulder straps that are anchored more closely together on the pack.  F-Stop could also make one small tweak that would make the pack much better for a woman’s use.  The sternum strap, at least on my body, goes right over my bust area and cannot be moved up to be closer to my sternum because of some material on the shoulder straps keeps the sternum strap from being slid up.  With the straps as they are, I never buckle the sternum strap because the straps pull in too much and it is quite uncomfortable to have it buckled, given the strap’s location.  The hip belt probably fits a man with a narrow waist and hips quite well.  The hip belt fits me – hip curves and all – adequately.  The hip belt is generally comfortable but I would like the option to purchase a hip belt made for a woman’s hips (a little longer in the padded area, with slightly different contours).
• The top flap flops over the front of the pack when the pack is opened from the top.  Example of why this is an issue: some stuff flopped out of the mesh pocket on the flap while I was doing some night photography because I had not fully zipped the pocket.  I could have easily lost a battery and some other stuff that night.  One of these days, my car keys, an extra battery, or my headlamp will likely end up lost.  This is more about me than it is about the pack, but it is still a small annoyance.
• All of the color options are drab.  I would have preferred a more vibrant color. Why make a red Tilopa but not a red Loka?!

Overall: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  F-Stop: Please consider making a woman’s version of the Loka pack!

I have been looking for a way to meet more local photographers, so I decided to participate in this year’s RMNP Spring Fling get together in Moab.  I have been to Moab quite a few times, but not since I took up photography, so it was fun to visit with photography as the only purpose for the trip.  It was great to meet some of the wonderful photographers that frequent the RMNP site and I made a few new friends.

Here is a selection of color photos from that weekend (click the image to see it larger).  I will post a few black and white images soon.

May, 2010: Medano Creek is a seasonal “river” that flows during the spring in Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The creek runs along the base of the sand dunes, carrying melting water from the high peaks behind the dunes.  The creek’s flow changes from minute to minute as damns in the sand form and break upstream.  This changing water flow leaves behind interesting patterns in the sand, like the patterns shown in this photo.  At this time, the sun was low in the sky, helping add some texture to this little scene in the sand.  I intentionally exaggerated the lovely copper glow from the sun shining on the golden sand.

April and May are good months to see the creek in many years.  For 2011, Medano Creek’s flow is expected to be much lower than normal because of low snowfall levels in March.  There was also a fire in the creek’s watershed during 2010 and the National Parks Service has reported that soot and ash is showing up in the creek’s flow.  The creek provides a number of excellent photographic opportunities, from wide angle shots with the creek serving as a leading line to abstract scenes like this.  to read more about the creek, check out the NPS website.

Warning: personal content ahead.  Turn back now if you were expecting a story about crafting this photo. 

My family did not travel much during my childhood.  From the time I was born until the time I left for college, I can remember four trips – to Kansas to visit relatives, Arizona to visit relatives, Yellowstone, and my 8^th grade trip to Washington, DC.  None of those trips hold any particularly fond memories.  The one thing I wanted to see in Yellowstone, the Artist Paint Pots, was left off the itinerary.  I was too focused on a boy to enjoy Washington, DC.  The trip to Kansas was fun because the relatives owned a bedding plant company and had a pool.  All I remember about the trip to Arizona was my parents arguing over my dad’s driving in the snow and smuggling some citrus fruits into Colorado. 

Travel, more frequently, meant going to a local reservoir to camp for a night.  I always went with my grandfather and aunt, almost always to Chatfield Reservoir in southwest Denver.  It felt like it was a world away, but was actually only about twenty minutes from my parent’s house.  We took my grandfather’s musty old camper, adorned with itchy blue polyester fabric that I remember melting from the heat of a pot on one occasion.  We ate cold turkey hot dogs and Colby cheese.  Tang was the drink of choice.  We occasionally took an old rusty motor boat, the Frances Jean (painted in Broncos blue and orange), out onto the lake and occasionally caught, but never ate, some fish.  All pleasant memories. 

Things change, of course.  My grandfather is now suffering from late stage Alzheimer’s disease and is nothing but a shell of his former self.  The Frances Jean is rusting in my parents’ backyard and would likely sink if taken out onto a lake.  I don’t eat hot dogs anymore.  I travel a lot these days, trying to make up for lost time.  And I never go back to Chatfield, even though it holds a lot of pleasant memories of people who are no longer in my life in the way they were years ago. 

One morning last summer, I headed to Roxborough State Park for one of their infrequent early openings for photographers.  Their staff, unfortunately, did not arrive until well after sunrise to open the gate.  With a paid state parks pass for the day and not much to do at Roxborough, I decided to drop by Chatfield, a place I had not been for at least 15 years.  It certainly seemed more exciting through a child’s eyes, but I still enjoyed driving around and faintly remembered a lot of the locations around the park.  I ended up wandering deep into a grove of trees with the bright green grass of spring carpeting the ground.  I spent the morning and afternoon wandering around, stopping a lot to think about my past with this place, and taking photos of the grove of trees.  It felt good to visit.

About the image: I used a neutral density filter to help slow down my exposure to 0.4 seconds at f/32 at 70mm.  This image was created by intentionally panning the camera in a smooth vertical motion during the exposure.

Bret Edge, an excellent photographer and prolific blogger, has graciously featured me on his blog today.  He is doing a series of profiles of female landscape photographers to help inspire other women to pick up a camera and get outside.  Bret’s blog is an excellent source of information and inspiration about photography, and he has an photo impressive portfolio – I encourage you to check out both!  Thanks for including me, Bret!  I really appreciate it. 

Check out the profile here.

About the photo: Elowah Falls, Columbia River Gorge.  Right after a rain storm cleared for a brief moment, sun and mist combined for some interesting lighting.  2 image manual blend for dynamic range.  Magical and memorable moment in nature.

Ice melts on a pond at the Alamosa Wildlife Refuge in Colorado’s San Luis Valley

The National Audubon Society’s Guide to Landscape Photography  by Tim Fitzharris was the first book on landscape photography that I read and even after viewing the work of hundreds of other photographers since that time, it still contains some of my favorite landscape photographs.  One such image is an early morning view of Alamosa Wildlife Refuge, which is located in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.  

After viewing this image in the book about three years ago, I stopped by the refuge and was very surprised that such a beautiful image came from such a “boring” place.  Since that time, I have come to appreciate that a lot more than stunning scenery contributes to beautiful, memorable images – things like knowledge of a location, timing, and a photographer’s creative approach. 

Since that first visit, I have stopped by a few times, mostly to observe and explore.  During my last trip to the San Luis Valley in February, I planned to spend all of my time in the region at the Great Sand Dunes.  As seems typical of late, I was rushing out the door and left all of my memory cards at home.  I did not figure this out until I was standing in a field of sage, ready to photograph the silvery plants with some interesting clouds and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background.  Compact Flash cards are hard to come by in rural Colorado and by the time I found one, the day was fading quickly. 

Instead of trying to make it to the dunes, I stopped at the Alamosa Wildlife Refuge and was treated to some interesting finds.  I saw what looked like an ice covered lake in the distance and hiked out to it.  What I thought was a lake turned out to be a very shallow pond.  By the time I arrived, interesting clouds were swirling over Blanca Peak, the fourteener in the distance.  Although the ice was melting, I was able to do quite a bit of exploring because I could see the bottom through occasional patches in the ice and knew that even if I did fall through, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  After an afternoon of getting to know this place under more interesting conditions, I was pleased to walk away with an image that helps tell a story of a place that, on its surface, may seem boring but actually holds quite a bit of interest.

Edit: Here is one more image from that afternoon.