Early Morning Calm, Ogle Lake, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023
I went into Brown County State Park again early on the morning of October 28, 2023, first stopping at Ogle Lake. It was a bland sky morning, heavily overcast and no sunrise sky color. I made the image above, which is similar to ones made a couple of days earlier, except for the sky, then the blandness of the sky prompted me to leave the lake and wander through the park looking for better fall images.
BCSP Winding Road 6, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023BCSP Winding Road 7, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023BCSP Winding Road 8, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023Tall Fall 12, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023Gateway, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023Brown County State Park 6, Indiana, October 28, 2023BCSP Winding Road 9, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023BCSP Winding Road 10, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023BCSP Winding Road 11, Brown County State Park, Indiana, October 28, 2023Brown County State Park10, Indiana, October 28, 2023
Do you think I got enough leaf strewn roadway as leading lines in these images?
It seems suitable, at this time of the day, that the clouds in the sky and the geology in Valley of Fire, Nevada came together to create an hourglass shape, if one has the imagination to see it.
Light before the Storm
Another late day storm was brewing over the desert, which resulted in dramatic sky for background.
The Light and the Storm
I composed this image to have the rocks along the diagonal pointing towards the distant storm.
Then I thought maybe I had too much in this image, so I moved in close to the end portion of the foreground rock, keeping a portion of the little bush at the edge of the rock.
The Light and the Storm 2
This emphasized the foreground rock, but reduced the background and the stormy, cloudy sky, which I think is not an improvement. The wider angle view is better, I think.
The Light and the Storm 3
I like the way the rock texture looks, even on its own, but with the late day light and a stormy sky background it seems to really pop.
The Light and the Storm 4
In this image I like the foreground shadows that contrast with the late day light on the middle ground and the background sky and the rugged geology.
Skyway – Walk this way to reach the clouds.Symmetric Reflection – Earth and Sky Symmetry
Maybe the correct word is “symmetrical”, but the image is not exactly symmetrical, so I will stick with the “Symmetric” label.
Storm Reveal
I used the many linear features in the rock as leading lines in this photo, which is a cropped version of the original. The original included much more of the foreground, as I like those linear features, but upon reviewing, I thought maybe I over did it with the foreground.
Rain Wish
To be continued with much more of that late day desert storm,
As I walked towards a valley overview for early morning photography, I went past my neighbor campers, a middle age couple, that I had correctly assumed to be hunters, as they prepared to head out on their morning hunt. We chatted briefly, before I continued on my short hike over the open, frosty, grassy area.
It was also a little breezy, so I had to use higher ISO than desirable (noise increases with increasing ISO) to get a sufficiently fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of the grass and/or other vegetation in the images.
After the golden morning light was gone from the distant mountain tops, I continued to shoot as the shadows retreated from the broad meadow.
I began working my way down into the meadow towards the sinuous drainages running running across it, with the intent of using the drainage as leading lines, stopping along the way to shoot a few images of the sunlight sparkling in the morning frost. I was largely unsuccessful at capturing the sparkle with my lens of choice this morning, although I did not try to get really up close with the lens, so maybe I should not put the failure on the lens.
The beetle killed evergreens on the mountainsides made for much unattractiveness in the scenes here and I’ve tried to minimize that impact in my images.
Eventually satisfied that I had achieved as much as I could this morning, I headed back to my vehicle for coffee and a light breakfast, before heading on along FSR 380 looking for my next campsite.
After scouting around some of the BLM land and the Rio Grande National Forest in southeastern Colorado, we returned to our campsite near a large volcanic ridge for sunset photography.
It just happened that this road led directly towards a golden hour illuminated hill in the distance. There were nice clouds in the distance and thin, wispy clouds above those. Those wispy clouds added interest with the low angle sunset rays accentuating them.
English Valley Sunset, Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 19mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 3200
To the north of the road there is another eroded portion of a volcanic dike. That feature did not get much late day light, since it was in the shadow of hills to the west well before the golden hour. From the view point above that outcrop looks like a pinnacle.
English Valley Sunset, Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 24mm, f/11, 1/250s, ISO 4000
Walking to the east, this same outcrop looks completely different. Although, this feature did not get golden hour light, there were illuminated clouds in the sky behind it, making these last three images more interesting.
English Valley Sunset, Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 14mm, f/11, 1/320s, ISO 4000
This is a continuation of my photography effort in Yankee Boy Basin near Ouray, Colorado in July, 2020.
On a couple of our visits to this area, we drove past the waterfalls to try our luck with photographing variations in the local landscape. The images in this post are all from one morning’s shoot.
Pre-Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 14mm, f/11, 13s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
This first image is a long exposure made before sunrise, but it is evident that the mountain peaks are already getting some early morning light. Even though it was a calm morning, there may be some foliage motion apparent in the long exposure.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 14mm, f/11, 0.8s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
As the sun began to come up, I made a series of images, capturing the early morning golden light on the mountaintops, using the deep canyon, created by the many years of the stream flowing down the mountain side, with accompanying erosion, as a leading line into the image.
One of the subtle details that I like in these images is the shadow of another mountain peak that is superimposed upon the prominent, highlighted peak. I wish that I could say that I planned for this, but it was just an unexpected bonus.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 14mm, f/11, 0.6s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
I experimented with variations on this general composition, trying to determine the most satisfying one. For the one above, I moved past the tree that was on my left and rotated to the right to include the single tree on the right and more of the area along the right of the canyon. For the one below, I included a clump of rocks in the lower right and rotated to the left a little. I like this composition better than any of the previous ones.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 16mm, f/11, 0.8s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
The image below is a variation of the one above. I like this composition, too, but I still like the one above more, perhaps because the left side of the canyon stands out better in that image, as does the mountain peak at the top right, and the stream and canyon are leading more directly to that peak.
One might note that I edited out that dead tree limb in the lower left in the very first image in this post. I do not like that element in the other images, but removing it leaves some traces of the edit that might not be apparent to others that do not know that something was removed, but I know that the edit artifacts are there.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 15mm, f/11, 0.6s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
I moved back near my initial position to include the tree on the left in the image below. One can see a hint of the golden hour glow on the far left peak coming through the top of that tree. That effect looked better in real life than it does in this image.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 14mm, f/11, 0.5s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
I’ve highlighted the rapids in the stream a little in the editing process to emphasis its function as a leading line. I could probably improve the canyon’s and stream’s leading line function by a little more lightening along those, but I think the dark red rock along the canyon wall is sufficient and I do not want to take too much of the viewers eye off of that highlighted mountain peak.
Moving even more downstream along the canyon, I used a large boulder as a foreground object.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 16mm, f/11, 2.0s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
To me, that boulder looks too close to the far wall of the canyon to be pleasing. I may take another look at the edit of this photo to see if I can create more separation here. The leading line of the far canyon wall with the trees along the top edge is still effective in this image, leading the eye to the highlighted peak at the top left. There is an additional leading line behind the trees, formed by another drainage, leading the eye up towards the highlighted peak near the center of the image. Maybe the greenery in that leading line could be lightened a little more to improve its function.
Sunrise light in Yankee Boy Basin, July 2020. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm @ 20mm, f/11, 1/3s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 2.
My initial impression as I composed the above image was that it was not very interesting. But now that I’ve had more time to think about why I selected this composition, I like it more and maybe even more than any of the other compositions from this shoot. I like the light and color variation across the image and the leading line of the stream at the bottom left, intersecting with the drainage that goes diagonally across the image to the highlighted peaks at the top right. Maybe a little more editing might emphasize the leading lines better and maybe I could create more depth to separate that boulder in the right corner from the canyon wall.
The sky is rather dull in all of the images from this shoot. Clouds might have made all of these images more striking, but we have to work with what we have, when we only get to visit such beautiful places infrequently.
Higher resolution images can be viewed on my Flickr page by clicking upon the images. The images also look much better, when viewed on a computer screen, rather than the tiny screen of a phone.
