I left Ridgeway Colorado Saturday morning, September 22, via the San Juan Skyway, deciding to take that route to the south towards New Mexico, rather than travel the most direct route via US550, AKA The Million Dollar Highway, which I had just been on in July. I wanted to see some different scenery and I was not disappointed, even though, I know US550 from Ouray to Durango would have been a great, if somewhat scary with its hairpin switch back turns on a mountain roadway with steep drop offs with no guard rails, route, too.
There were some really good fall colors, more reds than I had seen in the past few days, along the chosen route in southern Colorado. I pulled over at one scenic pull out, needing a snack and to stretch my legs for a few minutes. Others pulled in and out of this area, to take a look around, while I was there. Before I got out of my vehicle, I saw, via my side mirror, the driver of a van behind me taking photos of my vehicle through his windshield. After my snack, I got out and walked back past that van. The driver was just coming back and he commented that he really liked my vehicle. The Sportsmobile does get a lot of attention, so it is not one to travel in inconspicuously.
As I was standing by the guardrail, looking out over the roadside mountain view, a group of motorcyclists, decked out in their riding apparel, pulled into the parking area. Most of the bikes appeared to be Harleys, but I noted one near the middle of the pack that looked different. I walked over to it to get a better look and commented to one of the nearby riders that I had never seen one like it before. He pointed out that it was a Spyder, a three wheel motorbike, and the rider was a “middle age” (not sure what this is now) female, who was really chatty about her tricycle and pointed out another “sportier, more powerful” model near the back of the pack, also ridden by a female. I asked one of the riders, if they were members of a particular club and he said they were just friends out for a ride. Most were from Wyoming, but a couple, he said, were “Idaho Potatoes”. He then held up his phone, asking if I would take a group photo. So of course, I did. Afterwards, I wished that I had had the presence of mind to ask their permission to get a shot of the group for my blog,
Nothing else of note happened along the route, but it was an enjoyable ride through countryside that I had not seen before.
I arrived at the south parking lot for Bisti access early Saturday afternoon, which, as expected on a weekend, had a number of vehicles in it, including a full size tour bus. I parked near the entrance of the lot between the bus and a long wheel base Mercedes Sprinter RV. After setting up, having lunch, gathering my selected photo gear for sunset photos, checking my Camelbak and InReach Explorer GPS device with previously set routes across the wilderness area, I relaxed a bit. Later, seeing the tour bus driver, I went over and chatted a bit with him. He turned out to be a very talkative person. He was originally from the northeastern US, but had moved to Colorado years ago, as had other member of his family. I learned that the tourists he was driving around were Latvian. It was a small group, too small to be profitable, he said, but the tour company had to host them, nonetheless. They had a guide to conduct them around Bisti, which was fortunate, otherwise they would, most likely, have no idea how to navigate to any of the interesting sites within Bisti. I was surprised that they were out there during the heat of the day.
Around 5PM, I set out into the wilderness, heading to an area referred to as the “Nursery” or “Cracked Eggs”, to which I had not yet been on either of my other two trips to Bisti. I loosely followed a pre-determined route that I sketched out via a satellite map view of the area with points of interest marked as waypoints, using GPS coordinates gleaned from online searches and a few from earlier photos that I had taken with GPS coordinates recorded via a device attached to my Nikon D90 some years ago. The one way distance to my destination was about 2 miles. So the resulting hiking distance was a bit longer, since I scouted a few interesting looking areas just off of my route for future possible destinations, recording a few new waypoints on my GPS device and getting a few reference photos with my iPhone. My Garmin InReach Explorer connects via Bluetooth to an app on my iPhone, which has an easier to use interface than that of the GPS device itself.
Along the way, I encountered a few of the Latvian tourists heading back to the parking area. They were not youngsters, mostly female, all looked a bit bedraggled and did not respond to my greetings. Maybe they did not understand English very well or were just too tired, hot and thirsty to speak.
When I arrived at The Nursery, I was pleased to see that there was only one photographer there, since it is a relatively small area and multiple photographers there could easily get into each others way. I chatted with him for a few minutes, then left him alone to finish his shooting, while I scouted the area, being careful to stay out of his way. It was still a while before the “golden” hour prior to sunset and I was a bit surprised that he was shooting prior to that time, since he was obviously a professional. However, he appeared to be shooting close ups of details in the “cracked eggs”, so I think he only needed the shadows and the contrasts. When he finished shooting, he hailed me, saying “It is all yours”. We chatted a bit more about gear, cameras, photography, etc. before he began his trek back to the parking lot. In our conversation, I learned that the long wheel base Mercedes Sprinter RV in the parking lot was his.
Soon afterwards, I proceeded to shoot a few compositions, even though it was still a bit early. I noted a small Z shaped hoodoo and, as I looked it over, I thought that one edge of it had a facial shape and I could imagine the top of it as long hair streaming back from the head. So I’ve dubbed this the Bisti Automobile Hood Ornament Hoodoo. To shoot it from the most interesting direction and angle, I could not isolate it against the sky and I could see that the hillside in the background was going to be problematic, unless I just left the background blurry, which would be ok; but I did not want a blurry background. To bring out the hoodoo from the background, I made a couple of images to focus stack in Photoshop, then played around with a couple of ideas for merging the images. I decided that the best looking result was a color background with a monotone image of the hoodoo, blended in Photoshop. I selected “seamless color and tones” for the blending during the focus stacking process, which muted the color in the background, but I still think it contrasts well with the black and white hoodoo image in the foreground.
As I was shooting, a couple of more people showed up and we greeted each other. Recognizing a German accent, I struck up a conversation. The man (Wiener) and his daughter (Anna), who was a student (university, I surmise), were on a tour around the western US, having started in Los Angeles. He and his family had visited the US on numerous occasions and he commented on how crowded the National Parks are now as compared to his first visits.
As the sun went low on the horizon, we each went about our shooting, being careful to keep both ourselves and our shadows out of the other’s shots. Weiner did most of the shooting, but occasionally shared his camera with Anna. Both shot hand holding the camera, as most tourist tend to do and I expect they were shooting with their camera in Auto mode. There were clouds on the horizon, which intermittently blocked the best sun rays, so we would stop shooting and chat a bit, then resume shooting when the clouds moved away.
There was a beautiful sunset that afternoon, which we both shot, before heading back to the parking lot. When I put a reverse graduated neutral density filter into the filter holder attached to my camera lens, Anna was intrigued, as she was not familiar with the use of filters. I explained to Anna why that particular filter was useful for photographing sunsets; but I gathered that Weiner knew about the use of neutral density filters.
There was nothing of interest in the foreground for this sunset shot, so I was satisfied with a silhouette shot.
Anna, learning that I lived in Texas, asked if I had been to Big Bend NP. So I told them about my first disastrous visit there, as we hiked back to the parking area. (I should write a blog about that trip sometime. It was a very memorable experience, although not a really successful photography trip).
We arrived back in the parking lot, where Weiner and Anna were tent camping, just before it got really dark. They were planning to go out again in the morning, but not prior to sunrise, as I was. We said goodnight and I did not see them again, other than from a far distance the next morning, so I did not get a chance to learn more about them.
The photo compositional possibilities here are only limited by one’s imagination. I have so many photos that I like from this photo session that it is not practical to include them all in this post, so I have selected only a few to include here, but others will be put onto my Flickr page.
