Crystal Mill
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- Salvador Dali.
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Today's photo is one of the most iconic scenes of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This is the famous Crystal Mill which also goes by the name Old Mill and is an abandoned wooden power mill built in 1892. The mill is located on an outcrop over a waterfall on the Crystal River. As fall peaks, this mill provides visiting photographers with one of the most iconic scenes of America’s western mountains.
While this is a famous location and we visited during the popular fall season, due to the remoteness of the location we were actually the only people here for about 2 hours and on our way back we met another couple who were hiking to the mill. So, its safe to say that it's not a tourist haunt like the Maroon Bells. By the time we reached the mills, the sun was out in full force but thanks to the location being in a Canyon and this being Colorado, there was no shortage of clouds that came in to block out the sun so that I could make my long exposure shot of the waterfall.
Technically this was a challenging location to shoot as being an iconic location finding unique compositions I almost an impossible task. Another difficulty is caused by the fact that the owner of the property has installed fences to discourage people from taking shots by the edge of the cliffs making limiting many compositions. Then comes the need to prioritize the various aspects in the scene regarding lighting, generally fall colors look better under diffused lighting while waterfall look better in the shade and dark wooden structures don’t look good in shade. So, I had to wait for the correct lighting and manage the rest with my filters. As you can see even after my best efforts, the mill is still in its own shadows which were something that I could not avoid due to the time of the day. But I paid special attention not to overblow the waterfall and still get good light on the fall colors.
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- Voltaire.
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Another shot from the beautiful crystal mill near Marble, CO. We were quite late for getting good fall colors, in fact our guide told us that up to couple of days ago there was good amount of color but they had very windy couple of days and most of the aspens were now stripped of any color.
Shooting here was challenging as it was early afternoon and the sun was still pretty high up in the sky and would occasionally get out of the sparse cloud cover and ruin my shots. As I was using two filters to compensate for the available light, the direct sunlight was causing extreme flare. But I managed to get couple of trick shots which convey more fall foliage than there actually was.
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More commonly known as the Crystal Mill, this structure, built in 1893, was a compressor station used to power drills and other tools in the nearby...
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- Winston Churchill.
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The last day on our stay at Ridgway we decided to visit the cool little town of Marble and take a jeep tour to one of the most famous landmarks of Colorado, the Crystal Mill. The trip is about 4 miles drive through a bone jarring mountain road. It takes almost 1 hour to cover the four miles and get to the mill but it's totally worth it.
This shot is a 4 shot panorama with an 18mm lens and a Singh-Ray warming polarizer. It was quite challenging to maintain the horizon on level while perched on a ledge. Hopefully I can return here when fall is in full swing again.
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- Dalai Lama.
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One more shot of my favorite location in Colorado, the crystal mill. For this particular shot, it was a constant battle with the sunlight streaking out from behind the clouds. As the shot was made during mid-day, the sun was pretty harsh and was giving me a lot of casting due to the fact that I was using a 10 stop ND filter and polarizing filter. So I had to actually wait for moving clouds to hide the sun so I get a decent cast and flare free image with decent long shutter speed.
Eventually, after a couple of misfires, a large cloud moved in between mountains and completely blocked the sun for me to get my shot ready. Thankfully I was able to get everything correct and was able to get back to our vehicle for the hour long trip back to civilization.