I’ve done a lot of hiking over the past two weeks. Many of the images are reaching my bar for a quality landscape photograph. A few make it to what I’d consider the bar of “portfolio worthy” – with one being up for consideration of as one of my top ten images of all time.
Let’s take a look at some of the work.
As I mentioned in Dawn Of New Beginnings In Colorado – the first morning we spent in Colorado Sophie and I went for a hike – the views the whole morning were phenomenal – however at a certain point I began to look towards our right as we walked along the trail towards the sunrise. That’s when I noticed these blue plants in between the wild strands of grass.
The rest of the morning was fun – but eventually we had to head home and paused hiking. That is – we stopped until the following evening. That night we hiked around a park a bit further out of town but just as beautiful.
We arrived at this park a few hours prior to sunset and began the hike. It wasn’t too long – but we took our time watching the sunset slowly illuminate the clouds which had been hanging above us all evening. What was blue and black was cast into cotton candy hues of pink and sherbet.
After cresting the hill we’d hiked up, we began heading towards the trailhead. On that path we turned around before entering the trees again. I noticed the final triumphant display of light I photographed on the left here.
The clouds which had been dark and moody all evening to the west had caught ablaze in a final display of color and warmth before plunging the world into the calm cool tones of a summer evening.
After this we hiked back to our car in the shade and the temperature began cooling quickly as it had risen. On the ride home we saw many deer.
The next hike that we did was far less involved than the prior two that I’ve mentioned here. We hiked a trail only partially (we arrived at the trailhead far too late for a full exploration). But we did manage to get some lovely views (the photo on the front page of this site (as of writing) was taken that evening). The image below was my favorite landscape shot of the evening.
The final park that I’ll talk about in this post was one we visited on our first Saturday Morning in the state. It was a short drive to reach it before an easy hike through a rolling meadow. We saw a coyote near the tail end of the hike which was incredible to look at – but other than that there was no wildlife witnessed.
As the sun swiftly soared through the sky the scenes transformed quickly from dawn to daytime with light being painted across the fields and meadow illuminating everything that lie before and behind us.
As we traveled further along the trail, we came across these collapsed giants. I noticed the sun painting the south side of this tree and got low and framed the sun between some of the branches. The result is glorious.
There is one other park that we’ve visited over the past two weeks but that one I want to save for it’s own special post. If you can guess what it is – comment below. I’ll let you know if you’re right.
So far Colorado has treated us very well – and frankly, I can’t wait to see what else it has in store for us.
I hope you join for the adventure. See you in the next one!