20Jul

Mt Bierstadt

So, I was about halfway finished with a photo for Thursday when my wife and I decided that we were going to climb a 14er  the next day.   By the moment we made the decision, it was time for bed as we had to get up pretty early.  A 14er is a mountain that is over 14,000 feet, there are 54 of them in Colorado.  My wife and the two puppies had never attempted a 14er and I did two about 10 years ago.  The hike started off great but shortly after we started we began to gain some serious elevation.  We made it to the top after three hours and basically ran down the mountain as some serious storms started to form around us.  He are some simple photos taken and processed on my phone.

Walking up to the base of the Mt Bierstadt. The summit is the tallest point on the right.

Saw Tooth Ridge that takes you from Mt Bierstadt to Mt Evens

Boomer got pretty tired towards the top

Yuri looking out over the valley

Over Looking Lake Abyss and Mt Evens

We made it to the top! 14,060 ft

18Jul

Flowing by Long Lake

Hey everyone!  I hope everyone is doing great!  My wife and I just got done with a blitz of family visiting us for the past few weeks.  As we settle down I was finally able to get the photos from our hikes onto my computer.  We took my in-laws up to the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area just West of Boulder about 45 minutes.  They choose to do a simple hike around Long Lake that provided gorgeous views of the continental divide.  Flowing into Long Lake was this nice creek.  I was able to find a small pathway that took me to an opening so I could set up my tripod for a series of brackets.

Processing:

This shot consists of two sets of brackets with three shots in each set.  I combined the two shots in Photoshop using the default panorama plugin and some further masking.  I applied a detail and contrast filter using photo tools.  Then some final touch ups were applied in Lightroom.

Question for You:

When doing HDR Panorama’s … do you process each set of brackets first then combine them to make a panorama?  Or do you combine each exposure to make several panorama’s then process them in a program such as Photomatix?  I like to hear your opinion.  Thanks!

14Jun

Walking to Indian Peaks

Today we head over to the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.  When we arrive to the area my wife and I were really disappointed to find that the last 2.5 miles of the road was still closed.  We decided to make the hike anyways.  This opened some pretty unique shots that I wouldn’t have been able to get during the open season as IPWA is one of the busiest hiking areas in the state.  I had a couple great windows through the trees to stand in the middle of the road and grab some shots of the mountains in the background.  These peaks climb into the sky showing their rocky cliff sides that make for gorgeous photos.  The top of the peaks are part of the great Continental Divide with Rocky Mountain National Park just on the other side.  I hope to one summer take the trail from this side of the divide to the other side in this area.  That would be a great challenge but provide for some amazing views.

12Jun

Great Company

It’s always great to have great people to join you on a hike up in the mountains.  On my trip up to Hell’s Hole, I was super excited to have one of my best friends from New Mexico and another great friend from Iowa join my wife and I.  They added a lot to the trip up to the top, even helping me with Yuri (our husky) on the way down so I could take pictures.  When we finally made it to the end of our journey we all plopped down exhausted ready for our lunch.  This is when I was able to get some snap shots of the group as we rested.  The only photos that didn’t turn out were the ones of my wife, haha, oops.

Till next time!

 

 

 

11Jun

Mossy Walls

WOOOWWWZERS!!!  I can’t believe it has been almost a month and a half since the time I have blogged and posted a photo.  Life has been lots of fun but busy since moving to Colorado and finding a great job here.  It is a pace that I’m not use to after growing up in small town Iowa.  I’m not use to having SOOOOO much to do outside of the house, which we are in love with.

Memorial Day one of my best friends came up to visit my wife a I.  One of the days we headed up to the Mt. Evans Wilderness Area for a long hike up to Hell’s Hole.  This hike was pretty strenuous but absolutely gorgeous!  We started off around 9,300 ft and ended up at around 11,500 ft above treeline.  Along the way there were several waterfalls, though many of them were only about a foot high, like the one pictured here.  I really liked this one though because it had a some great moss along it’s sides.  So I crawled back towards it to get this close up.  I thought it turned out alright even though my processing skills are rusty right now.  I see myself revisiting this one again.

I hope everyone has been great!  I can’t wait to get back into photography and blogging.  I have felt like a piece of me has been missing.

07May

Brainard Lake

Happy Monday everyone!  I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend and past week.  I missed out on a lot of posting last week but it was with good reason.  After six months of searching for a job within my career choice, landscape architecture, I found a job within the field here in Denver already.  I am super excited and feel really blessed to find a position within my profession that has been hit extremely hard after the housing bubble popped.

Another reason I haven’t posted much lately is my wife and I have been enjoying the mountains, A LOT!!!  I have been posting images during our hikes through my Instagram account.  To see more images from our adventures come follow me.  My username is AMOlson7.

This past weekend we made a trip up to the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.  Filled with streams, lakes, glaciers, and high rocky peaks this area is absolutely stunning!  The mountains you see in this image are also part of the Continental Divide.  This divide defines which way water flows in the U.S.  Water on the East side flows to the Atlantic Ocean and water on the West flows to the Pacific Ocean.  We will be spending countless days up in the area this coming summer.  Most of the hikes are still snow packed that make hiking tough, plus we still don’t have the best hiking gear yet.5

30Apr

Dandelion

Happy Monday Everyone!  I hope you have a great weekend.  We had a fantastic one here in Colorado with a couple of hikes.  I still can’t believe we live in Colorado now.  It has been fantastic!

Simple image today but it’s an image I’ve always wanted to capture.  I had fun capturing this image as well!  On a run with my husky I found a couple great dandelions to bring home.  In a dark room I set up a couple LED headlights for lighting and turned out this shot.  I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.  I’m not the best at macro photography but, hey, you can’t become good at something unless you try.

I have a couple more experimental images to show you later on this week from our hikes yesterday.

26Apr

Maxwell Falls

Hello Everyone!  This past weekend we made our way up to the Evergreen area just about 30 minutes away to hike up to Maxwell Falls.  We had a great time hiking up with some family that live in the Denver area as well.  The hike was very scenic with lots of small waterfalls to take photos of.  The only bad thing was that things are just starting to bud out up in the higher country.  I hope to get back up here later on in the year to retake this photo with some more green in the photo.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

24Apr

Hello from Denver

Hello Everyone!  Boy, it has been way too long since I’ve posted.  As some of you know I took this long hiatus to prep for a move out to Colorado from Iowa.  I’m proud to say that my wife and I safely made it out to our new home.    We’ve gotten all settled in and have started to get comfortable with our new surroundings.  This past weekend was great as we got up to the mountains twice this past weekend for some short day hikes.  That’s partially why I didn’t have this post ready for Monday, opps!

I won’t be posting everyday for the time being.  I really want to work on the quality of my photos both out in the field as well as in the post processing skill set.  This is another reason I took my hiatus.  I had to take a step back from photography for a bit to get my thoughts in order because I felt my work wasn’t at the standard I want it to be at.

Today’s photo was taken at Denver City Park back in the middle of March while I was visiting Denver.  Things hadn’t greened up yet by this time.  If you want to see a much better photo from this spot, check out Rick Louie’s photo.  The large mountain you see is Mt. Evans and to the right of it is downtown Denver.  Mt. Evans has the highest paved road in North America, taking you just over 14,000 feet above sea level.  It is a very cool road to travel up but very nerve racking.

05Mar

A Classic

Happy Monday everybody! I hope you had a great weekend like I did!

Today we go back for a classic truck I found in Key West. I’m not going to pretend anything about classic trucks because I don’t know anything about them. I do know when to respect a truck as cool as this one.

I love to write for my blog and post pictures. Unfortunately, starting this week I will be posting less frequently with new photos for the blog. I’m in the middle a large transition in my life that needs to take priority for the next month or so. On the other side I plan on having stronger photos and more knowledge with photography.