Majestic Morning

Winter returned last night and I awoke to 15 degrees and 3 inches of new snow. I was tired and it took a few cups of java to get my eyes to open, but fortunately moment arrived at about the same moment that light began to spill over the mountains to the east. I really didn’t want to go out today but I knew that my author copies from Amazon of my Wildilfe Photography Book would be at the post office and the kitties were complaining incessantly about their food variety so out the door into the cold I went.

I decided to first drive out to the overlook and have a look at the aftermath of the storm on the mountains. As I wound my way out of town I caught a glimpse of the Sangre de Cristo Range in the distance and they were putting on quite a show in the storm clouds and fresh snow of last night’s weather. Of course I was ready with my digital camera and even my old Canon A-1 with most of a roll of Ilford B&W film. After all these years living in the mountains I know every overlook and every parking spot along the scenic byway and today I was going to stop at every one of them!

I also knew the view from the mining district over in Goldfield might be pretty cool today so I went over there too. I hope you enjoy a few of the pictures, I thought it was just magnificent this morning!

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Winter Storm in Black and White

Eleven Mile Canyon and the South Platte River

I don’t know why, I have always enjoyed going out in winter storms and shooting black and white pictures. The winter is winding down so when I saw the snowflakes yesterday I had to get out in it. I have a roll of Ilford HP5 black and white film in my Canon A-1 film camera and I’ve been wanting to do a video about it for some time now. Incidentally, I received an email from Mike’s Camera yesterday with a link to a batch of low resolution previews from my previous film shoot at Eleven Mile Canyon. The film and high resolution CD still need to be sent down from the main lab in Boulder, but at least I can see that the pictures turned out, something you never know with film until the film is developed 🙂 I’ll do a more extensive post on the images when I get the high resolution versions back.

Snowy Mines

So anyway, I wanted to do a video about shooting black and white film in the snow so yesterday was the day to give it a try. I’m not one of those that likes to put my camera on a tripod in the weather so I decided to just use my phone as a video camera, and I have to say it didn’t do that badly! I also shot a little footage out the window with my Canon 90D and I discovered that if you have the camera set to black and white picture style you are going to get black and white video. I didn’t intend that but in this case with the near monochrome scene anyway,. it worked out ok!

Snowy Mines

By the time I was ready to shoot my first image the snow was coming down hard, which looks pretty cool in the video… nothing makes me happier than snow falling in the mountains 🙂 My first image was captured in Goldfield where all the old historic Cripple Creek / Victor gold mines are located. I don’t necessarily trust the 50 year old meter on my A-1, especially in such harsh conditions, so I brought along my Sekonic incident meter to make sure my exposures were correct, film is too expensive to waste on bad exposures!

Snowy Mines

I continued wandering around mine country getting images in the snow for the rest of the morning, except for a few minutes I spent at the Gold Camp Bakery in Victor having a ham and cheese croissant, one of my favorite things in life 🙂

Well anyway, I didn’t get the entire roll of Ilford done yet so the only images I have were the ones I captured with the 90D, it will be interesting to see how they compare to the film when I eventually get it back!

Snowy Mines

I have always liked the old Ansel Adams prints and the selenium processing that was popular in those days. To me regular monochrome looks too brown and too warm for the snowy scenes I like to capture. It took a lot of fiddling but I eventually came up with a process using the hue and saturation tool to recreate the toned look I like so much. The top image from my Ilford shoot at the canyon is regular monochrome right from the scan at the lab and the others in this post were done using my “selenium” Photoshop process. What do you think? Feel free to leave comments!

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Quite a Day and a Roll of Film

Bitter cold greeted me two days from the official arrival of the Vernal Equinox, otherwise known as spring. One thing is for sure though, spring cannot be counted on in Colorado. So a day of photography that began with an ice scraper and frozen fingers could only get better from there, and a green chili breakfast burrito at the Mountain Burger in Florissant Colorado didn’t hurt 🙂

Frozen South Platte River Valley

Eleven Mile Canyon was also frozen, something I was anticipating and had planned for by bringing my old Canon AE-1 film camera with it’s six remaining frames of black and white film. Bald eagle photography hasn’t been great there lately due to the imminent spring hatch of new eaglets but I figured I could at least get a few shots of the frozen river valley following our spring snowstorm. The frost covered trees and frozen chokecherry bushes along the banks of the South Platte were as beautiful as they were frigid.

Mule Deer in the Brush

As Kevin and I cruised up the river there were no raptors to be seen. It’s about time for the osprey to return so we carefully watched the treetops on the ridge for their appearance, but it seems we will have to wait a bit longer. The literature says they can arrive anytime after the middle of the month and last year I didn’t see them until the end of March and the beginning of April. There were no eagles, but at the bend we spotted a small herd of mule deer so we pulled a little ahead and out of sight so we could sneak back and get a shot of them feeding down by the river. I only captured one clear image of one of the does before they wandered into the dense reeds along the river bank but it felt good to get out and do a bit of shooting, something I haven’t had much luck with lately!

Winter Elk

A few more miles down the road revealed another herd of animals, this time some rarely seen elk making their way down to the river bed. We thought they might be trying to get to the water but it soon became apparent that the reeds along the banks were their target, probably for their breakfast. From the distance we were at it was difficult to get a clear shot of them but I snapped a few anyway just to have a record of the unusual scene. I’m amazed at the awareness of elk, we were probably a hundred yards away on the other side of the river and yet these amazing animals were immediately aware of the vehicle stopping and windows opening.

Horned Lark at Eleven Mile

It didn’t appear that there would be any eagles visiting the canyon this day so we decided to move on to the big reservoir in Eleven Mile State Park where we had good prospects of photographing the herd of pronghorn antelope. A curious flock of small birds followed the truck as we proceeded along the road through the park. I wanted to get a bit ahead of these interesting little feathered visitors but they wouldn’t allow it. Each time the truck got close to catching up with them they moved further ahead. Finally I stopped to see if maybe they would come back within camera range. Sure enough, when the truck stopped they stopped and I was able to shoot out the window. I wasn’t confident that I’d get a usable image of the tiny birds but I hoped I would at least get a good enough picture for Merlin to identify.

Winter Pronghorn And as it turns out, my Merlin app identified the flock as horned lark, a lifetime first sighting for me! This particular specimen appears to be the less brightly colored female of the species.

Soon we spotted the main subject of this visit, a small herd of pronghorn antelope making their way through the snow. Unfortunately there was nowhere to hide and the furtive creatures spotted us right away and began to move further away. It’s difficult to get a compelling image of an animal that is moving away and showing you it’s hindquarters, but luckily they stopped few times to look back to see if we were following them. Our long lenses and 1.4x teleconverters came in handy to get good shots of the swift little ungulates.

American Bison in the Snow

By this time the sun was high in the sky and the lighting situation on the bright snow was nearly impossible. But a lone bison walking through the snow with the mountains of the Pike National Forest in the background was too tempting to avoid. I dialed in a stop and a half of exposure compensation to account for the dark animal on the bright white snow and did the best I could. With a bit of Photoshop help I was able to bring out some detail in the animal, probably creating my favorite image of the day mostly just because it was a buffalo. They are such amazing majestic creatures it would be hard not to like a picture of them!

To top off an amazing day, I was successful in shooting the remaining frames of my black and white film so I hope to make a trip down to the city to submit the roll for processing. Mike’s Camera still develops film on site, a rare thing these days so I plan to take it there. Since I use Ilford HP5 black and white film, it will be possible to develop it there with their C41 processing system. Apparently some black and white films need to be sent to the main lab in Boulder, still a reasonable turnaround time compared to some places that take weeks to get your film done these days!

I will be placing many more images from today on my website and my Instagram account so please feel free to follow my progress on both of these platforms!

Frozen South Platte River

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Snowshoeing the Back Country

Storm Clouds on the Sangre

It was only seven degrees Fahrenheit at first light this morning and like so many days lately, I resolved to just stay inside and drink my morning coffee… But also like every day, I looked down the valley at the Sangre de Cristo Range to see what kind of show might be playing out in the mountains. It looked amazing today so I packed up and headed out to get a front row seat.

I was glad to see that I was the first one at the trailhead, and maybe the only one… The snow is so deep now that the fair weather hikers have stopped coming, but with snowshoes the hike is easy. There has been so much melting and freezing lately that there is a hard crust on the surface and with snowshoes you can just walk right over the top of it 🙂

Storm Clouds on the Sangre

The view at the summit was amazing so I decided to try for a pano. However the clouds were so thick today that I could only get a three image panorama, not such a bad thing though. With less images I could zoom in further and give the view of the rugged mountains that much more detail!

On the way back down I enjoyed the rippling and glittering of the the fresh snow and tried for a closeup. Don’t know if I actually got what I had in mind but I still like the image 🙂

Storm Clouds on the Sangre

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Storm Clouds on the Sangre

A Black and White Winter

Finally completed a project I’ve been wanting to do for some time now… Shooting Eleven Mile Canyon on a frosty winter morning with black and white film in my old Canon AE-1. I almost waited too late though, we’ve had a warm stretch and a lot of the ice on the Platte River has melted along with most of the snow along the banks.

Icy South Platte River

But, we finally got a good snow and some zero degree weather yesterday and I decided now or never, at least for this season. So I loaded up a roll of Ilford ISO 400 film and ventured out to the canyon. 100 speed film would have been the better choice but I don’t happen to have any of that. I packed up the camera plus my old Canon 70D to shoot some video with and of course my 90D with the 100-400 and the 1.4x tele in case I spotted any eagles. I also brought along my old Sekonic incident meter so that I could use the old camera on manual without having to worry about the bright snow messing up my exposures.

Icy South Platte River

It occurred to me to check the old incident meter against my 70D to see if they agree, so I set the digital camera to the same values as the meter called for and took a couple of test shots. As it turns out the old meter and the 70D agree exactly on the parameters for exposure so I realized I could actually get some duplicate shots with the 70D while at the same time using it as a meter for the film camera. This of course gave me another idea for a blog post, a side by side comparison between film and digital images. When I got back home to the computer I converted some of the images from digital to black and white so when I get the film and prints back I will compare them in another post.

I was done with all the pictures and video about the time it started to warm up and melt the snow and felt that it had been a pretty good day. I decided to go on over to Woodland Park before it started snowing again and I was greeted by quite a show on Pikes Peak as the next storm was making it’s way on the scene. I had a few exposures left on my roll of 36 so I added a few cool black and white shots of the peak to my day as well.

Storm Clouds on Pikes Peak

We have another winter storm rolling in tomorrow night so perhaps I’ll use up the film in the snow on Thursday morning. I’ve also been wanting to try black and white film out on the old gold mining ruins on a snowy day so maybe I can kill two birds with one stone by shooting the Cripple Creek / Victor mining district in monochrome.

Speaking of birds.. When the sun finally came out and warmed the river banks a small flock of mountain chickadees came to visit. I tried my best to photograph them while they were happily singing and bouncing around… looks like I may have gotten one good picture anyway 🙂

Mountain Chickadee

I’m still working on the video for this post, as it turns out after upgrading to Windows 11 and installing a new video card my old video creating software no longer functions. I’m already paying $30 a month for my Adobe products, the Photoshop package plus inDesign, so for just $20 more I can have the entire suite of publishing products including Premiere Pro and After Effects. Unfortunately those aren’t simple to learn packages so the video is being delayed a bit while I get up to speed.

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The Snow is Getting Deep

Deep snow on the Sangre de Cristo Range of Colorado

I was surprised when I arrived at the trailhead this morning to find nothing but pristine unbroken snow for me to plow through with my snowshoes. It didn’t take long to discover why I was the first in a while to attempt the steep climb. Most people hiking in the area don’t use snowshoes or cross country skis and today the snow was far too deep for hiking boots. It looked like a few deer had been walking around on the mountain but for the most part it appears that any sensible creatures have abandoned the local peaks for more hospitable territory.

Deep snow on the Sangre de Cristo Range of Colorado

All signs indicate the elk herd has returned to the mountain as there were a lot of elk sized hoof prints leading from the grassy south side of the mountain where all the snow has blow away, around the mountain and into the forest. Hopefully I’ll get there early enough one day to see them and get pictures. I’ve seen them from a distance but haven’t been able to get any pictures since last fall when they departed the high ground for their winter shelter below.

The trip up the mountainside was tough but the trip back down the other side was even tougher! The snow was a good foot and a half deep on the backside of the mountain and at one point I managed to slip off the packed trail beneath the new snow, landing me face down in a deep drift… camera first. Eventually I struggled back to my feet where I was able to brush the snow off the camera and lens before any moisture was able to make it’s way past the weather seals to the inner workings. Now that I’m back home the camera is drying out with the batteries out and doors open just to make sure that there won’t be any moisture damage.

I was captivated by the ripples in the wind blown drifts so I tried a couple of shots to see if I could capture the texture. I think a wide angle from a very low perspective would have done a better job of capturing the scene, but unfortunately I didn’t have one along with me. Perhaps next time I’ll take my 24-105mm lens along instead of the long lens. Of course that will be the time I see the elk herd! I don’t think I want to carry my whole pack, it was hard enough to keep my balance in the deep snow and to extricate myself from the depths after the fall!

Well anyway, I eventually made it to the bottom of the mountain and around to the south side where the snow isn’t as deep and other hikers have packed a trail. I have plans of snowshoeing the trail to the higher peaks this season, but for now my legs were really happy to be back at the truck! Next week we are due to add significantly to the snow pack, perhaps I’ll try that then!

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Deep snow on the Sangre de Cristo Range of Colorado

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Eagle Action at Eleven Mile

Bald Eagle in Eleven Mile Canyon I try to make it to the canyon at least once a week to check on the eagles. Very soon I expect to see the female sitting on eggs in the nest but that day was not today. When I arrived there were no eagles near the nest, only a red-tailed hawk a little further upstream. However I was happy to find Speckles on his favorite tree up by the bend, just waiting for me to photograph him :)

I pulled in as close as I could and trained my long lens on his position high in the tree. The light wasn’t very good so I hoped he wouldn’t stay right there very long but unfortunately for me I must have arrived shortly after he did. He took his sweet time preening his feathers and looking around until my arms and hands were about to fall off from holding the heavy equipment. My hand kept going asleep so I had to keep shaking it out to keep it from going numb and I was sure I was going to miss the inevitable flight.

Bald Eagle in Eleven Mile Canyon Eventually he called out and a few minutes later his mate arrived in a tree a few feet upstream. They chattered together for a few minutes and then he flew upstream. Fortunately after an hour of waiting I just happened to be ready and managed to capture a couple of nice in-flight images before he disappeared around the bend. I was glad to see his mate, I haven’t seen her with him this season and am glad to see she’s doing well. Eventually she flew upstream as well so I followed in hopes of better light.