continental divide

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I’ve been going through my old travel photos a lot lately. Not sure if you can tell 🙂 This one was taken last year in Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado. It was my first time visiting the state and I seriously fell in love. This image has been sitting my desktop for a little while now just waiting for me to edit it. I don’t usually keep raw images on my desktop like that, but this one was different. I didn’t want loose it in the thousands of other photos I have from this trip. I even have an image similar to this that I posted last year, but I think I may like this one better. It definietly gives more depth and has far more interesting lines to look at. What do you think?

In other news, I’ve been listening to Creative Quest by Questlove on Audible. You may know him as the drummer of The Roots and the Tonight Show band. First of all, he narrates his own book which I love. I feel like it gives it such a personal touch. I also think it’s really cool how when he references a song in the book, they’ll play it in the background. Definietly one advantage over reading the actual book. I’m not all the way done with it yet. I’ve been slowly listening to it every time I’m driving in the car or if I’m out taking pictures but I can say I have a great appreciation for him and his art. He questions his own creative talents which I thought was very interesting and relatable. I love how he has so many interests in different kinds of art too. The most obvious is music but he also mentions his love for the culinary, comedic, and visual art. Whether you like it or not, I’ll probably write a book review about it once I’m done like I do many of the other books I listen to. Its definietly a thought provoking book but I think anyone who’s interested in hearing other people’s ideas about creativity should definietly listen to it. Just putting it out there!

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/80th of a second and ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens. No tripod. Just used the log as a stabilizer to capture it and to make the depth look even more dramatic.

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Reflections day 4. Man, this is gettin’ easy.
Check out day 1, 2, and 3

I took this image earlier this summer at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It was an early morning hike around Bear Lake and the water was so still. It was literally like a mirror when I saw it and immediately knew exactly how I wanted to capture it. I knew that I wanted it to look as if it were printed on a piece of paper and you folded it in half, you would see the exact same thing on either side. Kinda of like what you used to do with paint and paper as a little kid but with nothing else seen especially in the corners. I don’t know why but I was paying particular attention to the corners when I was capturing this. I didn’t want to give it any kind of location context.

A majority of the time, I’d probably want something in the foreground or something to divide it up, but not for this particular image. I wanted it to keep it as simple as possible and just enjoy the beauty of nature. Man, can you imagine what this place looks like now? It’d be so cool if the leaves changed color with this reflection. Praise hands emoji!

After I photographed this image, we ended up hiking around to this side of the lake but it was so difficult. The water levels were really high, there was still some snow on the ground (which you can see little bits of), and it was super muddy. Let’s just say the hike didn’t last too much longer after that. I’m really hoping to go back to Colorado in 2018. I seriously fell in love.

The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/250th of a second ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.