Category Archives: Landscape

Fall colors

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A little scene, captured along highway 82 in Colorado, west of Twin Lakes on the road to Aspen:

Fall colors

A fun little story goes along with this shot. The landowner where I spotted this scene has the cleared part of his / her land set up picture-perfect, almost as if to invite photography. Old barn, old windmill, old tractor — it’s all there just waiting for a “calendar shot.” When we slowed down so I could grab a few shots, someone was already parked in the driveway. I pulled alongside him, and he left — to be replaced about 30 seconds later by another visitor. After I was done shooting, yet another photog took my place.

If the landowner set out a tip jar, they could collect some serious cash (more if they had pre-signed property release forms)!

Presiding

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Another shot of Mt. Rainier — this one from the southeast:

Presiding

It was so hazy on this particular day that I had to use 5 images and heavy use of HDR in order to get any separation between the sky and mountain. I’m fairly happy with the results — at least it doesn’t seem as unnatural as HDR images can sometimes turn out.

The sleeping giant

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A view of Mt. Rainier from the east, along the White River:

The sleeping giant

I brought this image together using HDR Efex Pro 2 from four raw photographs. It was a bit of a salvage effort, since the sky was particularly hazy the day we visited. I was impressed at the software’s ability to pull detail out of the sky, avoiding a flat white backdrop for the snow-shrouded peaks.

Past that rocky shore

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Taken from Muir Beach toward the southeast — a bit of San Francisco’s in there somewhere…

Past that rocky shore

On our “spring break” trip to the bay area, we wound up having gray and rainy weather most of our stay (surprise!). So photographically, there was little to do but make the best of the situation.

Since we had time to linger a bit at Muir Beach, it managed to put my Blue & Gold polarizer to use in this shot — helps give things a suitably noir feel.

Landmark

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It’s tough coming up with a “different” way of photographing a landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge. Making life more challenging for me was the fact that on our recent trip to the bay area, it was overcast and wet most of the time.

But as luck would have it, we were headed north from San Francisco during one brief window of time in which we had actual blue skies and sunshine. I’d found some roads on the north end of the bridge via Google Earth, so wound up at an old artillery site called “Battery Spencer” in the Marin headlands. It was windy as can be, but I managed to hold my gear still for long enough to get off a few good shots like this one.

Landmark

There are other spots further west along the road that will give you good views of the bridge, but Battery Spencer is the best one I could find to capture both the bridge and the city in one frame.

Tulúm shoreline

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Looking north along the shoreline at the ancient Maya ruins of Tulúm in Quintana Roo, Mexico:

Tulum shoreline

Tulúm may not have the best architecture compared to other Maya sites, but you’ve got to admit that its location can’t be beat for photography! And if you’re lucky enough to show up at low tide, the beach in this picture is open to swimmers and sunbathers.

On the beach

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At the ruins of Tulúm in Quintana Roo, Mexico:

On the beach

You can’t actually walk on this beach (it’s reserved for nesting sea turtles), but a trail through the site runs right past it — and it makes a great foreground for shots like this! The only real problem is that trash tends to wash up after storms, so you need to clone it out of your shot (since, obviously, you can’t walk out and get it off the beach).

House of the Cenote

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At the ancient Maya ruins of Tulúm, México:

Tulúm's House of the Cenote

This was a tricky shot to get — bright sky above, and (dark, cave-like) cenote below. It didn’t turn out well as a multi-image HDR, for some odd reason — but tweaking a single image and running HDR on that did the trick. Amazingly, the structure at the top still has some of its original (500+ year old) plaster, in spite of being close to the cliff’s edge and the Caribbean.

Want to know more about photography in Tulúm? You might want to check this out…

Xaibe

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You may not realize it, but this is a particularly odd structure in the Mayan world:

Xaibe

It’s a pyramid called Xaibe at the ancient ruins of Cobá in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The name comes from a Maya term for a crossroads, since it’s at the junction of four Maya roads — and it’s nearly unique in being a Maya pyramid with an elliptical (vs. rectangular) footprint. It *may* have been used as a lookout tower, but I’ve never seen anything resembling an authoritative statement on that.