Wildlife, landscape and weather photography
It would appear winter is here. 😉
Jackson Lake State Park in Colorado was almost entirely frozen over this morning. It was a “balmy” 3 degrees when I took this shot but, oh my, so beautiful and quiet. I just sat there on the rocks watching the sun rise over the horizon and taking it all in. I love the Great Plains!
An absolutely gorgeous morning yesterday along the Colorado Front Range. While we enjoyed a quiet morning, our mountains were once again getting pounded by snow. There weren’t many clouds to the east where the sun was rising but to the west, the storm had settled in over the high country. The pastel colored clouds with the setting moon and even a couple of deer made for a nice scene.
Quite a beautiful scene at Rocky Mountain National Park’s Sprague lake this past Saturday morning. I loved the silhouetted mountains and trees with the beautiful sky above reflected on the water’s surface below.
The heck of it, this image could have been much nicer – had a arrived 10 minutes earlier. I could see the morning show was going to be amazing and I was trying my best to hurry up and get in position. Unfortunately, slow moving vehicles in the park delayed me along the entire route. I was going nuts watching what I was missing while I was driving but it was not to be.
Nevertheless, the later part of the sunrise was still pretty good.
I am back from a fantastic weekend of camping in Colorado’s high country and have lots of pics to share. First of them is one I took this morning. I was almost entirely focused on some wildlife to my west. Thankfully I turned around and saw the gorgeous light show at sunrise that was happening to the east.
I’ve been seeing tons of these beautiful flowers across the Great Plains lately and last weekend made sure to capture some pics of them. This image is probably my favorite of the bunch. As the sun rose it illuminated the petals of the flowers making them seem to glow. Image available here.
Colorado has had a good number of wildfires this season but nothing as bad as what areas to our west have seen. As fires rage in California, Montana, British Columbia and Alberta, their smoke has been a near constant presence this summer.
This makes for some crazy, gorgeous sunrises and sunsets but of course I would prefer not to have them as a result of the fires. Nevertheless, it does make some good photo ops such as this rising sun taken yesterday morning in Weld County. The ring was caused by the polarizer filter on my lens.
We have had our share of wildfires here in Colorado but nothing like what California and western Canada have been seeing. Smoke from blazes in those areas backed into eastern Colorado overnight last night creating this somewhat eerie scene this morning. It was pretty but of course the reason for it is not so great.
Down below, the sunrise was obscured by clouds. This morning I was at about 10,000 feet allowing a clearer view – kind of. While there were no clouds directly above, some were along the horizon as was smoke from wildfires in the region. The smell of the smoke was quite strong but the red sun made for a bit of a surreal scene and was kind of cool. Taken in Arapaho National Forest.
My morning photo drive a couple weeks ago took me past these wind turbines and I couldn’t resist taking their picture. These are part of the Peetz Table Wind Energy Center located in Logan County, Colorado.
The facility, operated by NextEra Energy Resources, is one of the largest wind power projects in the United States. It has 133 1.5-megawatt turbines that are capable of generating enough electricity to power more than 77,000 homes.
Each turbine is 262 feet tall from the ground to the center of the hub making them rather imposing structures on the relatively flat lands of the Great Plains.
My wife and I headed to the top of Mount Evans today for a photo excursion. Lots of cool wildlife shots to share later but this came away as my favorite of the day. It was extraordinarily hazy at 14,000+ feet and the air was thick with the sight – and smell – of smoke from wildfires burning in Colorado. In color, the image wasn’t really extraordinary but a conversion to black and white provided a pretty cool look I think.
