Posts in Category: Colorado
6/26/2011: High Plains Sky, Happy Sunday!
I had forgotten how big the sky is on the High Plains of Colorado. The Rockies push up amazing clouds that drift (or drive as the case may be) out over the gently rolling prairie. This is near Byers Colorado, about 90 miles east of the cloud factory of the Front Range peaks. It is a 4 frame panorama. Click on it to open it to the full width of your screen or monitor.
I spent an afternoon and early evening at a shooting range north of Byers demonstrating spotting scopes (work), and had an ideal opportunity to watch (and, between sessions, capture) the variety of High Plains clouds that you can see in a single day.
All these shots make use of the Nikon Coolpix P500’s Active D-Lighting to maintain detail in the clouds, and Lightroom’s Graduated Filter Effect to bring up the foregrounds. If you click the image to open it at WideEyedInWonder, and then click the Show Details button at the top right, you can see complete exif data on any of the images.
And for the Sunday thought: I really did not expect much from a shooting range on the high plains…in fact I was disappointed when I found out that our one day outside was to be further from the mountains than we already were at our hotel. I forget that no matter how flat the landscape of our lives at any given moment, the creator can, and very often does, fill the sky above with glorious evidence. We just have to look up and notice.
6/25/2011: Denver and the Front Range, panorama
You should click the image above to open it to the width of your monitor or screen. It is a thee shot panorama, each shot at 215mm equivalent field of view, with the tops of the Denver skyline on the left and the sweep of the Front Range mountains behind. I took it from the plateau above the city where they have developed the airport hotel complex, near Aurora. I caught a crow in passing, just as a bonus. I used the “assisted panorama” scene mode, hand held, on the Nikon Coolpix P500. After you take the first shot, about 1/3 of it is displayed on the left side of the finder, in transparent mode, so you can lay it directly over the live scene and line up the second shot, and so for the second, etc. for as many shots as you want to attempt. You need a program like the PhotoMerge function in PhotoShop Elements 9 to stitch the individual shots. PSE’s PhotoMerge is very sophisticated and does a excellent job of masking and tonal adjustment to make a seamless composition. It will even automatically fill in edge gaps left in the alignment.
Due to the heavy haze over the city this shot took some extra processing in Lightroom after assembly in PSE. I did my usual Clarity and Sharpness adjustments, plus some extra Recovery, Fill Light, and Blackpoint adjustment. I also did a general contrast boost, trying to offset that haze, and finally dragged a Graduated Filter effect down from the top for a local brightness and contrast adjustment (- brightenss and + contrast).
I think it captures the naked eye view pretty well.
6/23/2011: Rocky Mountain Hazy Majesty
I am spending a few days at the foot of Rocky Mountains near Denver Colorado (or near the Denver Airport, which is not quite the same thing). So close and yet so far! If I walk out between the hotels to the edge of the development, I can see the sweep of the southern Rockies behind the haze over the city…a haze so deep it almost swallows the foothills. For this shot, I moved back and used the long end of the zoom to compress the image and frame the high peaks, so the snow fields float mysteriously over the landscape, challenging our perception.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 466mm equivalent field of view, f5.7 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Program with Active-D Lighting and Vivid Image Optimization.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness. Cropped slightly from the bottom for composition.