Erich's Photo and Travel

Finally stopped procrastinating and bought some Lee ND Filters.  Neutral Density (ND) Filters allow you to use longer shutter times on your camera.  Why would you want to do that you ask?  Well, have you ever seen a milky smooth waterfall or a landscape picture with ethereal  clouds?  Sure you have so basically you have a stupid question.

I will admit that Lee Filters are not cheap.  There are cheaper ND Filters out there but I rarely settle for subpar cameral equipment (aka crap).

The only bad thing at this present time is that it is winter which means no waterfalls or running rivers.  In addition, we are a land locked state so taking a long exposure at the beach is also out of the question.  Insert DAMN here.

To get a feel of our filters, we went to Roxborough and Golden Canyon State Parks for a test drive.

Here are the results:




Stay tuned for summer photos.  Coming this summer.

The past few weekends have been spent with family or work.  The family part was cool but the work shit is exactly that...Shit.

Since our road trip to spend Thanksgiving in Indiana is a week away, we needed something to fill the gap.

Downtown Denver sounded good.  But what to shoot?  We opted for cathedrals located in downtown.

A little google search gave us nine to choose from.  We loaded up our iPhones with addresses of the churches not actually knowing if any of them would be open.

Traffic was breeze for a Saturday and we parked in our favorite parking lot a block away from Larimer Square.

We ended up getting to four churches with only one actually being open.





We ended up walking about five miles/ 12,000 steps that day.  Our hopes of hitting all the churches and even bigger hopes of more than being open didn't succeed, the day was still a great day as I got to spend it with the love of my life, Michelle.

FINALLY!

We made it to the high country to capture the fall colors of Colorado.

We opted for the Breckenridge to Como route which took us from Breckenridge to Como via Boreas Pass.

Since we felt that the high country would be full of "Leafers" AKA Peepers, we hit the road at 0530.

We got to Breckenridge (via Starbucks) at about 0700 and met little to no traffic.

That is a good start right?

The fog settled in once we got to the Continental Divide so our pictures needed a little work in Lightroom.





There were quite a few people already parked in the turnouts.  I believe that they were mountain bikers since we really didn't see anybody and all of the cars had bike racks.
After we started our descent, the aspen trees were few and far between.
At the base of Boreas Pass we were able to capture a few more pictures:


Como is a small and very old town.  Great place to live if you are on welfare.
We got on highway 285 and headed south towards Fairplay and thought we would try Aspen…

We always seem to screw up the perfect time to go out and do some nighttime photography.  Well, while I was munching on my granola for breakfast yesterday I got to thinking... Hmmm, the Paint Mine outside of Colorado Springs would be cool to shoot at night.  Tonight is a full moon and mostly clear.  Mostly.

Sounded good to us.  Time to charge the batteries and clean off the filters.

Since we are now interested in serious Neutral Density Photography, we packed our Variable Neutral Density filters and step down rings in the bag and headed out.

We took a few test shots and then setup our tripods, attached our ND Filters and found that they really SUCK.  Big time.  We couldn't get the filters to stop all the way down.  I won't go into all of the details about ND Filters but they basically allow you to stop down the light entering the camera lens without affecting color.  Why would you do this you ask?  Nice blurs on waterfalls, creamy ocean shots, unbelievable landscapes.  The lis…

One thing is for certain is that traffic does not exist in Kansas or Oklahoma.  Not even during the Labor Day Weekend.

Michelle and I took Friday off so we could do a short road trip (750 miles one way is considered short for us) through Kansas and to Tulsa, OK.

Michelle plotted a few interesting things to see in both states.

Kansas:  Monument Rock (yes, a rock), Strataca Salt Mine and the Keeper of the Plains in Wichita.

Oklahoma:  A waterfall and the Philbrook Museum of Art.

We got off of the interstate for Monument Rock and the road immediately turned into a dirt road.  Drive twenty miles, make a left.  Drive six more miles, make a right.  Drive twelve more miles, make a right.  This went on for a bit but we eventually got there.  We pulled in the parking area and nobody else was present.  Sign of good things to come.

The sun wasn't out and but we had some cool clouds for the most part.

I will have to say that Monument Rock was really cool.  In the middle of nowhere, surrounded…

Decided to do a bit of off roading a couple of weeks ago. So as drove out to Georgetown and made a right on a dirt road. 
Here is what we found.