Tag: Rainy

Thirty Mile Campground, Rio Grande National Forest, July 2020

An interim stopover on my journey from Ridgeway, Colorado to the southeastern corner of Colorado in July, 2020 was Thirty Mile Campground.  It is a long, slow drive on rough county/forest service roads to the campground.  This campground has sites that one can reserve and others that are on a first come first serve basis.    There were only a few sites available, when I made my reservations prior to my trip to Colorado.  I wanted to be sure that I had a place to stay at least one night, so reserving a site assured that I would not have to search for a free site in the forest.  I thought I might be able to get one of the free sites, if I decided to stay a second night; but the campsites were all full or reserved on the day that I arrived and there were no reserve sites available for a second night.  I would have to wait until the second day to find any available free sites, if I wanted to stay a second night.

My campsite in Thirty Mile Campground, Colorado, July 2020. iPhone Photograph.

Thirty Mile is a nice campground and my site was just inside the campground along the Rio Grande, where it was pleasant to hear the rushing water in the river.  After checking into my campsite, I took a walk along the river to check out possible locations for photography late in the day and/or early in the morning.

The river is pretty, but there seemed to be limited possibilities for photographic variations along the river.  This is a popular place for anglers and many of the people in the campground were there to fish for trout in the Rio Grande.

I watched a doe grazing on the opposite side of the river, shooting a number of photos and videos with my phone.  The doe did not seem to care that I was watching it.  One of the unedited videos can be seen here.

After my walk along the river, I drove along the road past the campground to check out the scenery along the Rio Grande Reservoir, which is a very long reservoir.  The road beside the reservoir is mostly a narrow one lane road with periodic pullouts, where vehicles can pass each other.  It was a rainy, overcast day, which created some photographic opportunities.

An iPhone shot through windshield on a rainy day along the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.

I drove almost to the very end of the reservoir before turning back.  Near the end, the water shallowed, revealing the trace of the river going into the reservoir.  In the upper end of the reservoir there was colorful vegetation and I got lucky when a break in the clouds allowed sunlight to highlight some of that vegetation.

Near the upper end of the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.

During my drive back towards the campground, I stopped to shoot with my iPhone at a few locations.

Wildflowers and Boulders beneath cloudy sky along the bank of the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.

There were a few scattered wildflowers and large colorful boulders, some covered with lichen, in various shapes between the roadway and the reservoir.

Boulders and a mountainside along side the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph,
Sportsmobile framed by boulders with a mountainside in the background, along the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.
Pointy and flat top boulders along the bank of the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.
Wildflowers sheltered against a large boulder along the banks of the Rio Grande Reservoir, Colorado. iPhone Photograph.

The next post will have DSLR photos taken along the river and along the reservoir.

Stay well and safe,

Ken

 

 

 

Colorado Fall Color Road Trip – Day 2

The sunrise photo shoot on day two of this trip was mostly a disappointment.  The features that I had hoped would get good sunrise light did not get sufficient illumination and those that did get light did not make really good subjects.  With a big zoom, I was able to get only a couple of fair shots of a distant feature with colorful foliage in the foreground and middle ground.

Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 400mm, f11, 1/80s (soft)
Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 400mm, f11, 1/160s (sharper, but no clouds).

I, also,  tried shooting along the little creek behind my campsite, but the compositions were limited and not very appealing.  There were some reflections of colorful trees in small portions of relatively still water, where I tried to get good images and even tried to get a number of images to focus stack, but I was not happy with any of those images.

The creek just to the west of my first campsite along Owl Creek Pass Road, Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 32mm, f16, 1/20s, 09192018.

Soon after breaking camp and beginning to scout for another site for late day shooting, it became very overcast with intermittent rain.  I managed to get a few good shots of Courthouse Rock, standing in a light rain, shooting from the far side of the meadow, where the scene from True Grit (1969) of Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) and Lucky Ned Pepper (Robert Duval)  charged at each other with guns blazing.  I shot a sequence of photos here with clouds passing across the rock face.  The shots vary from ones with nearly completely visible Courthouse Rock to ones with Courthouse Rock completely cloud enshrouded.

Court House Rock in the clouds. Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 80mm, f11, 1/40s.
Court House Rock with clouds. Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 80mm, f11, 1/50s.

This looked like a good scene for time lapse movies, so I experimented with the built in time lapse feature of the Nikon D850, shooting short sequences of shots to convert into time lapse movies.

It may take a few moments for the videos to begin, so be patient after clicking one.

{This is open range cattle country and the meadow from which I shot Courthouse Rock was so covered with cow dung that I had to calculate each step to avoid it.  I assume this was not the case during the shooting of the True Grit scene}.

I drove around quite a bit on this day, scouting locations for the next day’s shoot and looking for other places to shoot on a rainy, overcast day.  I ended up going all the way back down to just before the start of forest road 858 to a campsite/view point from which the entire profile of Courthouse Mountain is visible.  I had hoped to be able to shoot sunset photos from that view point, since I had seen a brilliantly lit sunset view of this profile from Ridgeway State Park, but obviously today was not going to be the day to do that.  However, since I was there, I hiked up and over a ridge to the east of the parking area and made a few images with the big 80-400mm zoom.  The images are not great, but here are a couple.

Court House Mountain from a view point along Owl Creek Pass Road on a rainy day. Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 120mm, f11, 1/40s.
Courthouse Rock shot from a view point along Owl Creek Pass Road on a rainy day. Nikon D850, Nikon 80-400mm at 340mm, f11, 1/100s.

I did not find a campsite that really appealed to me more than the area near my first campsite.  So I ended up setting up camp no more than maybe a half a mile from the first campsite.  It rained off and on through the night and got fairly cold, but the temperature inside the van was still only down to about 50 degrees the next morning and I only switched on the furnace for a few minutes just after getting up, while preparing for day 3 along Owl Creek Pass Road, which will be the topic of the next post.