White River National Forest

• Norman Douglas.

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After our stint at Ridgway, CO we moved onto our next stop which was in Aspen. And on our first day we went to the beautiful Maroon Bells view. We definitely were late for the season and only had a sliver of yellow let in the aspens but we got to see one of the most beautiful sunrises and got crystal clear reflection in the alpine lake.

In my brief time travelling I have found certain places that just stay with you and keep on beckoning you back to get that perfect shot which could very well happen if all the condition align. The moment I was here I knew that this was one of those places and I could see myself coming back again and again searching for that perfect shot. As for now I am pretty happy with my first attempt.

• 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.

• Berthold Auerbach.

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Maroon Bells, Colorado has to be one of the most stunning places on the planet. It was emotionally equivalent to seeing Yosemite's tunnel view on our first trip. With Yosemite, no matter how many times you have seen photos, it doesn’t really prepare you for the view which appears all of a sudden as you emerge out of the tunnel.

In the case of Maroon Bells, we got up here in total darkness so we could catch the first light on the mountains. As the twilight started light slowly crept in and the massive peaks emerged with crystal clear reflection on the Maroon Lake. Even after studying so many shots taken at this location it was still mind blowing.

• 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.

• Leonardo da Vinci.

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I took his shot while we were heading back to town from the spectacular maroon bells view point. I had eyed this small snowmelt puddle for its reflection potential earlier, but due to the darkness couldn’t really figure out the complete view. On our way back I could see the maroon bells reflected on the car’s side view mirror and decided to stop and head to the small pond for a reflection shot since we had almost now wind.

The scene at the pond was one of the most challenging dynamic range shot. I had to use a 3 stop ND grad filter and combine a 5 image hdr to get some detail in the sky and foreground. I would have liked a bit more detail to the left side of the image but this was the best I could do and get a natural balanced look.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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This shot is an old panorama stitch image that I took near the Maroon Bells during our 2016 fall road trip to Colorado. We had spent a beautiful sunrise at Maroon Bells shooting the iconic fall sunrise scene at the lake and were on our way back to our hotel. I saw this small pond just by the roadside and there was still some great light on the Maroon Bells, so I decided to get out and try my luck. This shot is a 5 shop Panorama stitch image I made near a random pond with some great morning light on the beautiful Maroon Bells.

In all my years in landscape photography, I have learned that one of the biggest challenges is to properly catalog and maintain records of all your photoshoots. I have noticed a pattern in my workflow That causes me to miss out on some really cool images. I usually import all my images to my desktop into a folder with the name of the location and date. Once all the images are moved, I use my geotag app to tag all my images with their GPS coordinates. Once that is done the next step is an ad-hoc selection of images for processing. This selection is usually based on ease of process, I pick images that can be done just by processing through Adobe Camera Raw and keep more technical scenes like the one that needs panorama stitching or exposure blending for a later date. Sometimes we schedule trips relatively closer to each other and I forget about these images and they are not processed for publication. In the case of this photo, our trip to Utah in December meant that this panorama stitch image was largely forgotten. But these days I am revisiting my old photos and I am glad I found this one. Plus writing about this makes me curious about how you guys are managing all the wonderful shots you take and I would love to learn more about any insights.

• Theodore Roosevelt.

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When we planned our fall road trip to Colorado, one of the key spots I wanted to see was the beautiful Crystal Mill along the Crystal Creek near Marble. I spend countless hours looking at various 4-wheel trail drive videos to assess whether I would be able to self-drive the trail to the mill in our new Subaru. But thankfully we decided on a jeep tour that took us to the mill and in a couple of hours. The tour took about two hours to drive the 10 miles out an back trail and was pretty good moreover, they explained the history of the various abandoned cabins that we found on the way and the geographical history of the trail itself. But we soon realized that the amazing scenery deserved to be photographed for its own beauty. We decided that the next time we visited, we should hike the trail and take as many photos as we can on the way.

While we were on the jeep tour, we took a break at one point near a small pond on our way back and I had an opportunity to take a shot of this beautiful scenery along the road which had some interesting light and some beautiful reflections of the nearby hills.

For this shot, I used a two stop ND grad filter to balance the light in the sky and the foreground. The difference in light at this scene is so great that if I didn’t use the ND grad filter and expose for the bright sky as conventional wisdom demands the whole foreground will be in the dark. So, my only choice here is to bracket the image and make an HDR image or use an ND grad filter to balance the bright and dark sections of the image perfectly. This also allowed me to get the leaves and grass blades in the foreground with crisp details. I also focused this scene by focusing at the hyperfocal distance making sure that the whole scene is in sharp focus. I didn’t use a polarizing filter as that would have cut into the reflection and since there is not much foliage in the scene to accentuate using the polarizer. I love how the reflections of the sky and the surrounding hills came about in this shot as well as the leafless aspens on the hillside. Hope you will all enjoy the read about this shot as much as I did making it.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson.

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2019 is officially over, its been a year without any photo trips. But it was also the year that bought some significant life changes; we became parents to an adorable baby daughter, new job, another cross country move, and finally being homeowners. It was a hard grind, especially for my wife, who came close to losing her life during delivery and had to move away from her beloved Santa Monica, leaving all her friends and family. So it was an eventful year, and we are thankful at the end of the year.

I also want to thank everyone who visited my Flickr stream/website/ Instagram, commented, liked, or emailed me about the images. You guys helped me tremendously in my growth as a photog and as a person. And I want to offer thanks from the bottom of my heart.

Now a bit about today's image. The spot by the lakeshore is usually in high demand, and we had to wake up at 4 am to stake our claim. We had to wait patiently for the sunlight to break through the mountain peaks and lit the summit of the Maroon Bells. The weather can be described as frosty at best, but when the light started to appear, it transformed an already stellar view into something that's difficult to describe in words.

• Lucretius.

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It rarely rains in southern California, but we do get those days occasionally during the winter season. It was raining for the past two days and finally the sun is back out. I was going over the old photographs and realized that I missed processing one of the panorama stitch images from our trip to Colorado during the fall of 2016. If my memory is correct this shot was made at McClure Pass at an overlook that faces east towards the town of Marble and a range of mountains that includes Mt Daly, Capitol Pean, and Sheep Mountain.

This shot was taken using the 24-70mm lens in vertical orientation at 56 mm and is a stitched together from about 9 images. I used a 2 stop ND grad filter which I realigned for each shot. I am lucky enough to have a ballhead that has the panning mechanism close to the clamp making easier to pan at the right degrees. The shot was taken at sunset with some amazing light on the mountainside.

• John Ruskin.

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Another shot I took at the stunning maroon bells view point at Aspen, CO. This shot was made from a short hike to the left from the main viewpoint. There are some fallen trees here along with a very muddy coastline. So not many people ventured here, plus we had almost perfectly still water and gorgeous color that morning so I think most photogs were really content with what they got.

So I decided to ignore my wife’s cold weather protests and decided to see if I could get a better angle from here. The sun had risen up a bit so the light was strong but I was still getting some colors in the mountain tips.

• Richard Jefferies.

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The mountain peaks in this photo are part of the marron Bells Wilderness near Aspen, CO. They are located directly behind one of the most popular scenic views in the continent, that of the Maroon Bells with the lake in front. Due to my obsessive planning, we were one of the first people to be at the spot at about 3 hours before sunrise and once set up camera and tripod had enough time to wander around looking for other shots.

Once the sun started rising I noticed that the mountains behind us were getting lit up perfectly and decided to the point my camera at them and snap a few quick shots. I couldn’t spend too much time shooting them as the Maroon Bells started getting light soon after and all our attention was robbed away by that grandiose scene.

• 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.

• Theodore Roethke

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I took this shot a couple of years ago during our road trip to Colorado. The purpose of the trip was to properly enjoy colors of proper fall foliage. One of the spots we decided as a must have for the trip was to see the sunrise at the iconic location of Maroon Bells. These 14k ft mountain peaks provide a perfect reflection on the Maroon Lake and provide photographers with a perfect sunrise photo opportunity.

While I love a classic spot like the Maroon Bells, but a better challenge, at least for me, is to find an interesting composition that’s different from the iconic photo. I found this spot near the Maroon bells location and what attracted me to the composition was the interesting diagonal lines present naturally in the frame. Fall was pretty much over at this location by the time we reached but there were still some colors left on the aspens near the ridge. While we are all waiting for the new year and an exciting 2019 I hope everyone finds the path to conquer their mountains.

• Michael Kennedy.

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I have always believed in planning my photography trips well in advance. This is mainly due to the fact that as I am getting older, extended vacations are difficult to come by and since my preferred mode of transportation for photo trips is by road getting free to do a proper trip gets rarer by the year. But fall of 2016 was interesting, as usual in that year during fall I was starting a new project and my wife had an important deadline to meet for work that made taking any time off seemed like an impossible scenario. But I jumped the gun a bit and bought some books about Colorado and started to map some of the destinations I wanted to see. My wife soon jumped in the fun and this became our destressing activity in the evenings.

As we started to visualize the trip and plot a plan, I got a job offer that would allow me to take a break in between jobs, and we decided to take the trip immediately after my wife’s deadline passed. Now, this was a week past the peak foliage peeping time for Colorado that year, but we got about 10 days for the trip and had one of the best road trips in while. This shot was taken near the iconic maroon Bells location, we were driving back after a sunrise shot when I noticed this small pool by the road. I knew that I have a better chance of getting a clean reflection shot here, especially with the grove of aspens around. I used a polarizing filter and a 3 stop ND filter to balance my exposure and stitched together two landscape shots to get a squarish composition. My original plan was to get the whole pond in the composition but there were some elements including an electric post that forced me to crop out some of those unsightly elements.

• Henry David Thoreau.

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Took this shot while we were on our road trip in Colorado. This stunning location is the Independence pass and the elevation at this specific location is above 12000 ft and no I didn’t make a mistake. Basically, at this location, you are getting a glimpse of alpine tundra environment above treeline, from the comfort of the car.

This pass is located on the route from Aspen to twin lakes and usually closes during winter due to heavy snowfall. I had not expected this pass at all in my planning and when the elevation kept on going up we were a bit confused. Then the road evened out suddenly and we saw tons of people enjoying outside, so we parked and got out and it was freezing. After spending close to 10 minutes frantically putting all our layers on we were ready to explore.

I think this place take a close second behind Mt Washington in NH for the coldest winds in my experience. I was fascinated by this cabin close to the parking lot and decided to include the rustic structure into my shot. The effect of wind can be seen from the fact that this mall cabin is anchored to the rocks. I would have loved to spend some more time here but we had a schedule to keep and places to be.

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