Road Trip West; Arrived In Colorado!

Sunrise, Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado (click to enlarge)

We finally arrived in Colorado after a very leisurely drive west.  In 1996, two photography friends and I made this same road trip from our homes in southeastern Virginia to Colorado Springs in 2 days.  My wife and I did it in 5 days.  That is the difference between "traveling" and "going somewhere."  We were in no hurry so we just took our time and enjoyed each day as we experienced this great country.

Blue hour, about a half hour before sunrise. (click to enlarge)

We arrived in Colorado Springs and the first thing I wanted to do was to get the 50 lbs. (22 kg) of bugs off the front of my vehicle. LOL I found a car wash that is probably the best car wash I've ever seen.  For $17 US, they got every bug off my vehicle, cleaned every inch of my vehicle, including in all the door openings and inside bottoms of the doors and even cleaned the moon roof glass inside and out!  I wish we had one of those back in Virginia.   My vehicle looked and drove much better after the thorough cleaning!  Doesn't it always seem that vehicles drive better after they have been cleaned?  

The image described in the text.

We planned on spending only one night in Colorado Springs as we wanted to continue our westward trek.  One place in Colorado Springs that I've enjoyed in the past is Garden of the Gods Park.  It is a lovely place with red sandstone rock outcrops on edge with (some) protruding as high as a couple of hundred feet.  These are not one solid wall, but are interspersed with gaps of grasses and trees.  Of the three or four times I've been there in the past, I only have one image that I think is a keeper. It was a very stormy day heavily overcast with an ominous sky. As I turned around in the driver's seat of the rental car at the time, the clouds parted and the sun shone on one of the massive formations for about 10 seconds, then closed back up again.  I managed to make 2 images.

This time, I wanted to go out before dawn and pick my spots so I could photograph before the sun rose in the blue hour, at sunrise and for the following hour during the golden hour. I left the hotel at about 5:45 a.m. and drove the short distance to the park, drove around to refresh my familiarity with the outcrops and picked a spot for blue hour and sunrise.  After sunrise, I picked a couple of more spots for golden hour photographs.

After I made my images I wanted to get out of the big city with all of its traffic and congestion and get up into the Rocky Mountains.  That morning before leaving town, we enjoyed whole wheat toasted bagels with cream cheese and some wonderful Ethiopian coffee.  What a wonderful way to start a day—photography at dawn, a great bagel and a marvelous cup of coffee!  

Golden hour (click to enlarge)

We then headed west over the Front Range of the Rockies on Route 24 and was headed for our next destination, Montrose, Colorado, where I have a good photographer friend who has been very ill and I wanted to visit him. 

Sunrise, Garden of the Gods Park, Colorado Springs (click to enlarge)

I saw the image below as I was driving, then quickly pulled over to the side of the road and snapped a couple of shots.  This is a nice preview of things to come in Colorado.

Colorado Route 24, looking south, just on the west side of the Front Range (click to enlarge

About the gear.  I really had a difficult time deciding which gear to take.  I like using both systems and both systems are capable of making outstanding photographs.  At the last minute I decided to take our Honda Odyssey van (which I bought several years ago specifically for road trips and it is the best road trip vehicle I've owned with lots of room, even to sleep if necessary, quiet, comfortable and up to 30 miles per gallon of gasoline!) which meant I had extra room.  So the easiest thing for me was to take both the Fujifilm gear as well as the Olympus gear.  So far, I've used each about the same amount.  

How do I choose which to use in what situations?  It has to do with the lenses I keep on each camera.  I keep the Fujifilm 16-55mm f/2.8 lens on the X-T2 and the Olympus 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens on the E-M1 Mark II.  If I know that I will need a focal length between (35mm field of view) 24mm and 85mm, I pick up the X-T2.  If I know that I will need a focal length between 24mm and 200mm, I pick up the Olympus.  The subject matter dictates which lens I need and, in turn, which camera I use.  Do I have my longer 50-140mm f/2.8 Fujifilm lens with me? Yes, but I can be a bit lazy and many times I just want to grab a camera with a lens attached and head toward my subject.  Carrying two lenses complicates matters.  I know.  Shame on me...

There you have it.  In the future, I'll write more about the gear and I'll be extensively posting images from both systems and if I don't tell you which made which image, I bet you can't tell the difference!

UPDATE:  If these images aren't quite color correct or a bit too light or a bit too dark, I'm having a difficult time editing them correctly on my laptop.  The display varies with angle and I'm trying to determine the correct viewing angle so what I see on my laptop is what I see on my iPad in Blogger.  So, please bear with me.  I will probably post many of these again when we return home and I can properly edit them on my calibrated desktop computer.  Thanks.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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