Wildlife, landscape and weather photography
A random capture from this past weekend in the Rocky Mountains. I was actually watching some nearby creatures when I looked around and saw the moon, crystal clear and looming above. I couldn’t resist swinging by tripod head around and snapping a few captures.
While full moon’s are beautiful and get the most attention, the light tends to be so bright and direct that it hides the details of our natural satellite. During the other phases though, the light isn’t as direct and helps to really make features pop. In this image, taken yesterday morning not long after sunrise, you get a really nice feel for the ‘texture’ of the moon and can see the details of the craters much better.
The setting moon at sunrise. A very pretty scene this past Saturday. As the sun rose in the east and cast its warming rays on the landscape, to the west, everything was aglow and a setting near-full moon dotted those beautiful blue skies. Taken at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
At the end of my photo drive this past Sunday, I swung through St. Vrain State Park, Colorado. There was one particular spot that had a number of birch trees absolutely with absolutely gorgeous fall foliage. I hopped out and shot those trees from just about every angle possible with my wide angle lens. At one point, I glanced up and see the somewhat faint crescent moon through the canopy of leaves. It looked awesome against that deep blue Colorado sky so I went back to my truck and grabbed my other camera with my big zoom lens and returned to capture a bunch of images of our only natural satellite and the leaves.
Taken during the Harvest Moon last week. As I have written about and posted pictures of recently, smoke from wildfires in Oregon and Montana blanketed Colorado for the better part of a week. While the cause is saddening, this led to some awesome colors at sunrise, sunset and in this case, a moonrise.
Stepping outside my comfort zone here and piggybacking on some ideas for collages I saw online. This one takes 11 images of the various stages of the solar eclipse from start to finish as seen from Goshen County, Wyoming. I am far from a Photoshop pro as I rarely need to use it for most of my work but this one came out pretty good I think.
All images taken with my Canon 7D Mark II and a Sigma 150-600 Sports.
Three years ago my brother mentioned the eclipse to me and we said then we were going to go and I am so thankful that I did. For the photography I did a lot of reading, planning and practicing and it panned out. I captured the event from start to finish and overall think the pics came out quite well.
Here is a series of eight images together – the top four showing the eclipse beginning and the bottom four showing it ending. Me thinks a trip to Texas in 2024 may be in order! 😉
Oh my. I cannot begin to describe what I experienced yesterday. Eclipse 2017 was everything I had hoped it would be. Breathtaking would be a good word for it.
Here you see the ‘diamond ring effect’ – the few seconds right before the eclipse enters totality. Nothing short of amazing!
I had planned on driving home right afterwards but unfortunately traffic kept me in place. I did actually start to head for home and didn’t make it two miles before hitting a monster traffic jam on this little highway in southeastern Wyoming. Rather than fight it, I turned around and spent another night up here. More pictures to come!
Daytime images of our only natural satellite are a lot of fun. Normally we only pay attention to the moon in the dark but during the day it looks pretty neat against those blue skies. Taken yesterday morning, the waning gibbous moon was easily seen in the southwestern sky.
I can’t help but look at the moon and wonder ‘what could have been’ had our nation continued on its course of manned space exploration exploring beyond low Earth orbit rather than essentially giving up in the early 1970s. Surely by now we would have bases on the moon and likely would have even been to Mars. Such a shame.
The landing sites of Apollo 12, 14 and 15 can actually be seen in this image. Those of Apollo 11, 16 and 17 are just inside the area in shadow on the right. Want to know where they are? See here for more info.
Snapped this early yesterday morning on the northeastern plains of Colorado. It was just a couple of days past full but beautiful as always.
