Photographer in Colorado

Earlier this month, we took a birding trip to Monte Vista. Every year, at this time of year, Sandhill Cranes make their way north to their summer breeding areas. Monte Vista is one location where thousands of cranes stop over during their flight from New Mexico.

The city also hosts an annual Crane Festival. This year we decided to visit before the festival started. It was the 40th anniversary of the festival, so we chose to avoid the expected crowds.

For our first morning, we headed out to the National Wildlife Refuge at dawn, well before sunrise.

The cranes spend the night in the the ponds, where they are safe from any predators. Hundreds of Canada Geese also spend the night in the same ponds. About the time of sunrise, the take flight, either singly or in family groups, to daily feeding grounds. I managed to capture some of these magnificent birds in flight.

In the following image, the single crane took flight. In the background there are five cranes — all out of focus. I like the contrast of the four out-of-focus birds with the wings swept up above the single bird, contrasting with the wings swept down of the out-of-focus single bird.

Around the edges of the ponds are plenty of cattails. Hundreds of Red-Winged Blackbirds also spent the night in these cattails. There was an amazing cacophony of sound as the birds were chattering and calling from the cattails.

Typically, there are male blackbirds that have migrated to the ponds, while they await female birds to arrive. I did manage to find one female Red-Winged Blackbird, perched on a cattail.

This year we were lucky in finding a male Great-Horned owl during the late afternoon. They are really difficult to see clearly because they often perch close to the main tree trunk and are often tucked between other branches. Luckily, this owl was perched in a tree close to the road. They may also roost in trees far from the roads during the day. They are so well camouflaged that they become invisible.

During the other mornings, we headed out well before sunrise. Here are some more images of family groups of Sandhill Cranes leaving the ponds.

And here is a family threesome taking flight against the dawn sky.

We spent three nights and four days in Monte vista. However, for days two and three, there were strong cold winds blowing across the San Luis Valley, often kicking up dust from the dirt roads and ploughed fields. Regardless, we still enjoyed birding for all four days.

Winter is always a good time to view ducks and other waterbirds along the South Platte River. Now for something a little different. Mallards and Canada Geese are really plentiful species along the river. As a result, I don’t usually make photographs of these birds. However, this month I did find one female Mallard that was preening herself and flapping her wings at the riverside. I could not resist making some images of this one individual duck.

Those blue tail feathers are really striking in the above image. Here is another image with swept back wings.

Here is another image that shows equally spectacular wing detail of this magnificent bird.

On another morning, I found this Canada Goose that was flapping its wings while standing in the water. This might prove interesting. There were several geese in the area, so I may get lucky to catch some geese in flight.

Sure enough, the flock of geese took flight. I managed to capture a whole sequence of images. Here is the leading pair of geese taking flight.

I continued tracking the geese, with this one being the last in the sequence.

Later that morning, I was watching a male Buffelhead duck in the river, when he suddenly decided to take flight. These are small ducks, so the move very fast. Here is an image soon after he leaves the water, paddling with his feet.

A few moments later, he had successful taken flight. Here is one image as he was fully out of the water.

It is always a challenge to capture images of birds in flight. So I was happy with these few images from this month.

At this time of year, I usually take a walk through the neighborhood, usually in the evening after work, and sometimes at the weekend. Last weekend I chose a different route, where a bridge crosses one of the local “ditches”. Close by, there are several large sumac bushes that we covered with bright red berries.

Crossing the bridge, there is a collection of love locks attached to the bridge. That red lock just grabbed my attention, so I made this image of a cluster of three locks.

The route continued through the hospital and then to Harvard Gulch Park. Sometimes, I head down to the stream that flows though the gulch. Here that are some interesting rocks that have pink and gray coloring.

The edges of the gulch are covered with long grasses that reach down to the water’s edge. During the winter, these grasses, turn pale yellow and make a great monochromatic image.

The park is separated from a golf course by this long fence. Looking up the fence, there was a hint of blue sky behind mostly overcast skies. Another candidate for a black and white image.

Reaching the top of the fence, I decided to shoot another image as the fence curved to the right.

From here, I headed across the park. Close the the far edge, was a huge patch of snow and ice, that had been melting during the course for the day, forming a pool of water and ice. Gaps in the ice, where water had melted, allowed nearby trees to be reflected in the pool.

Sometimes I take a detour through one of the alleys. In one of these alleys is this colorful scarecrow.

It was close the sunset, so that was the last image of the day.

This winter, we have had several snow storms in the Denver area, with the mountains receiving even more storms. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to head into the mountains, near South Park, where I hoped to experience some storm action! Heading out on highway 285, as I approached Bailey, the storm was dumping snow on the mountains south of the town. I left the highway to find a location above the town that offered a clear view to the south. The soft filtered sun lit up some snow clouds in the valleys to the south.

Rejoining the highway, I headed up Kenosha Pass and on towards to South Park. At Como, I left the highway to join the dirt road that leads to Boreas Pass. At this point, there was some clearing of the clouds that allowed the blue sky to peek through. Stopping there, I made the following image.

For grins, I decided to head towards Boreas Pass for some more exploration. At the base of the pass, the road was closed for the season — typically this would be from November through to May. Boreas Pass was once the route of the narrow gauge railroad that connected the mountain mining town of Breckenridge to Como. Stopping at the roadside, I made this image. The falling snow progressive reduces visibility into the distance. This results in a nice layering of the mountain ridges receding into the distance.

Heading back, I rejoined highway 285 and headed south. There are large areas of South Park that did not have snow covering the ground. The mountain grasslands had turned into a pale yellow, as in this image. It was great to see the contrast between the yellows and blues whenever a patch of blue sky opened up in the clouds overhead.

Looking back towards the west, a snow storm was raging near Weston Pass.

Soon it was time to head back. I made my way towards Hartsel and Fairplay. Along the road was a sign to Tomahawk State Wildlife Area, that is located on a ridge above the park. This needed some more exploration, so I headed up the dirt road. By this time the sun was getting low, close to sunset. From this location, I could make out the Collegiate Peaks in the far distance. A the sun dropped lower in the sky, the clouds started turning yellow from the setting sun.

A few minutes later I started to head back. From this point, I was driving in light to heavy snow for most of the journey home.

Continuing with my visit, I made this image near the Hemingway parking lot. This area appeared to be popular with rock climbers — they were busy climbing the granite rocks that are on the left side of the image. I like this image as a black and white monochrome image because of the long shadows of the late afternoon.

Earlier that same morning, I found this bouquet of flowers that were growing from a fracture in the shaded side of a granite boulder pile near Quail Springs.

While visiting the Cholla Garden, I made several images of the Teddy Bear Cholla. Could not resist those spiny needles backlit by the afternoon sun.

The old parts of the cholla plant have turned a dark-brown color. Hidden in the shaded, dark side, of the plant, were some bright spiny needles. These were complimented by the colorful remains of the flowers and cholla fruit.

About half an hour before sunset, I found a location where there was a Yukka plant and Joshua tree casting very long shadows on the ground. The sun was about to star setting behind the hills to the left, so I hurriedly setup my camera. I made this image about five minutes before the sun disappeared behind the hills. By the time I had reached the truck, about 100 yards away, this area was in shade.

The following morning, I made my way to Quail Springs, heading towards a valley where Joshua Trees stretched out into the distance. This was one image looking back towards the path that I took.

I stopped by another Cholla bush that was catching the light of the sunrise.

Most of this area of the park had lots of live Joshua Trees. However, I did find this dead tree in the shadow of a slight ridge in the ground.

After returning to the truck, it was time to leave for Oxnard, where I had another visit scheduled for the afternoon lunch break!

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Joshua Tree National Park while on a road trip to California. It was late in the day when I arrived at Yukka Valley, so by the time I headed into the park, the sun had already set. The next morning I headed to the park, arriving just as the sun was rising above the granite hills. I made my way along a trail where I found this yukka plant, adorned with a long stem that flowered in some earlier season.

The park is named after the Joshua Tree. Here is one of the first images that I made of a Joshua Tree that morning.

I found a pair of Joshua Trees. In this image, the sun was low in the sky. Moving around, I made sure that the sun was located behind the trunk of the tree and created a silhouette of the two trees.

The higher elevations of the park are formed over granite intrusions. I found this granite boulder lit by the morning sun against a wall of granite that had vertical fractures resulting from erosion over the ages.

This was my second season visiting the park, so I headed down a track that led to Wall Street Mill. While exploring the area, I had a familiar tapping sound. Soon I discovered this Ladderback Woodpecker feeding on bugs in a Joshua Tree. The woodpecker was working up through the tree, allowing me to approach closely. Soon the bird reached the tree top, where it perched awhile before finding another tree.

At a lower elevation of the park, which is much warmer that the higher Mohave Desert area, is the Cholla Cactus Garden. On this visit, I reached the garden in the afternoon, when the sun was low in the sky. The Teddy Bear Cholla look like a forest of cactii! I like how the low sun lights the cholla spines in this image.

I made another closeup image of one of the cholla plants.

I had decided to leave the macro lens at home for this trip. However, I did bring a Lensbaby lens that allows a softfocus image to be created. It also had a limited macro capability. I used this to get close to a shaded area of one the cholla, where the remains of the flowers and fruit were located.

Teddy Bear Cholla have nasty spines. Occasionally, a ball of spines fall from the cholla, and roll around the ground. One got attached to my boot so I had to work it off without touching the spines. They can be very painful! In this image below, I decided to focus on the distant cholla heads, leaving the closer cholla soft and fuzzy.

As the sun sank lower in the sky, I headed to a location where a roadside Joshua Tree cast long shadows on the tarmac road. This road was especially busy at that time of the day, so I made several images. This was one of the images made in between the passage of vehicles along the road.

I did manage to capture some with cars passing, but those were deleted!

Here are some of my favorite images for November. Arriving at First First Art Walk, I passed by an alley where there was some new paintwork! These are some murals from the alley.

This is the second one in the pair.

The roll-up door, maybe a garage door, was recently replaced. This mural lost its body!

During one of my evening walks through the neighborhood, I pass by a parking garage. The low sun lit up the floor with warm evening light in between the shadows caused by the pillars.

This month was a quiet time for the birds along the South Platte. A lot of summer migrants had already moved away, and the winter visitors had not yet arrived in numbers. However, I did find this female Gadwall, and was happy to capture an image of her spreading her wings.

Later in the month, the Mergansers arrived. This male Hooded Meganser was enjoying the setting sun lying on a boulder in the middle of the river.

Enjoy.