Me and the 500 on its maiden voyage, courtesy of my dad

If you think of an ideal focal length for a landscape lens, you might think something in the neighborhood in the 24-35mm range. That gives you something wide to take the most of the landscape in that’s laid out before you. And while I definitely shoot a lot of stuff at that length, I tend to shoot about equally as much at the opposite end of the spectrum, especially in the fall where the ratio is much more in favor at the long end. I believe I purchased my 100-400 lens in 2000, and it has seen a lot of use since. Though it isn’t that sharp maxed out at 400mm, I think my copy does rather well and have no complaints. That lens never used to come off the camera during the fall and it just got to the point that I wanted even more reach and sharpness.

Enter fall of 2009 when I purchased a used Canon 500mm. This lens is pretty much reserved for the wildlife and bird shooters of the world, but I had far different plans. It’s certainly no play toy and not a purchase to take lightly. I suppose I’d get more use out of a nice used car instead, but I knew I’d get a good bit of use out of this lens for years to come. And in the two-plus years I’ve had it, I’ve shot 2,600 pictures with it, though certainly most are bracketed exposures. There are no signs of slowing down. There aren’t a whole lot of landscape-only photographers out there who employ the use of one of these things, but it has found a nice home in my toolbox. Actually, it takes up a lot of room when going on trips, but there’s no way I’d leave it at home unless I’m out for a backpacking trip. I’ve even been dumb enough to carry its weight and trudge up the steep walls in the Great Sand Dunes a couple of times! It really is as sharp everyone says, even with either of Canon’s teleconverter offerings, the 1.4x and 2x.

I usually find it relatively easy isolating sections of a given landscape and my results might indicate I slightly favor the intimate landscape, but I’ll photograph whatever looks good at the time. I suppose I don’t have much of a point with this post other than to share results that are from a bit outside of the box from a landscaper’s perspective. Below are some of my favorites with this lens to date.

South Fork of the White River near Buford with the 1.4x extender

Great Sand Dunes with the 1.4x extender

Star Dune

Mt. Herard closeup near Mosca

Chair Mountain near McClure Pass

Canyonlands

Elaterite Butte, Canyonlands

Grand Teton

Orion Nebula with the 2x extender

Black Canyon and West Elk Mountains

So, it’s been (gulp) four years already since I’ve last visited one of Colorado’s most impressive features, the Black Canyon. In fact, I believe it and the Great Sand Dunes are the the two most impressive single features and natural wonders the state has. I can’t think of anything else that comes close. I already have an extensive collection of imagery from the dunes, and my collection from the Black Canyon is rather limited. It’s time to change that!

The first trip back to this place was scheduled last weekend, but I had to shift it to this weekend. I’ll have Monday off. In fact, I’m going to be renting a pair of cross-country skis from REI, which will be the first time this native has even so much as put on a ski! Ideally, I’d like to be able to get some pictures from some of the overlooks beyond the visitor center where the road is closed during the winter. I figure gliding on skis will be a bit faster than walking. We’ll see if I can manage more than a hundred feet. And, since the Grand Canyon trip camping at -30 a couple weeks ago, I won’t even think twice about the traditionally cold Gunnison air. I have really been looking forward to going back. I plan to get there at least four times this year, but hopefully closer to six. We’ll see.

This driver’s point of view, 31-minute video covers the full 4.5-mile route between the outskirts of Marble to Crystal, including the Crystal Mill. There are always a lot of questions about how difficult the road actually is for many who haven’t been. Hopefully, this will be a definitive resource that answers that question, and can give the perfect preview. It does not require 4WD, and medium clearance is preferred. Shot on Memorial Day weekend, 2010. I was running the tires at ~12 PSI, so I was able to run a bit faster pace than what you’d be able to go at street pressure. I’ve done it in 37 minutes on street pressure, but that’s at a pretty rough pace for a vehicle. I apologize for the dirty windshield! I had just washed it in Carbondale to prepare for this and the sun direction doesn’t help.

I meant to put this up before last summer, but I never followed up. I see this as being a valuable resource to a number of folks. It is one of my favorite areas in the state. I’m a big fan of Lead King Basin and the rest of the Schofield Pass road as well, both of which can be reached continuing on where this video leaves off, and both are substantially more difficult. I have reports of those roads in my 4WD section.

Edited on 3/20: replaced with HD version

This year (well, I actually finished it last year) is the first calendar I have done. The full calendar can be seen here. In short, this calendar is one notch below top-notch; in other words, very impressive. Read on.

My main criteria for my own calendar was to have it in the larger 11×14 format. There aren’t many printers that offer this size, and I believe Lulu is the only other one I’ve found to date, though based on one account, Zazzle’s is superior. I’ve tried playing with Lulu’s version online, but I don’t see a blank template you can use, which means a cover photo is going to be inset in one of their cheesy patterns. If there is a way to avoid that, I haven’t found it. I’m still looking for other vendors to try to compare to in the future. I wasn’t sure what to expect quality-wise going into the Zazzle product.

The paper weight is pretty much perfect. Though I can’t hazard a guess on its actual weight, and Zazzle doesn’t specify, it does not have a cheap, flimsy feel, for lack of a better description. The front cover is glossy and the internal pages and back cover are a matte finish, which is desirable. I suppose it would be nice if the covers were even more robust, but for what it is, I don’t have any complaints. The back cover scratches fairly easily if you set it on anything abrasive, so keep this in mind should you hang onto it after the year has run its course. Actually, the images on the internal pages can scratch just as easily, but since they don’t touch anything, it’s a non-issue.

Color reproduction seems to be a pretty solid match (sRGB). My friend, Jody Grigg, also had a Zazzle calendar made, and a couple images were a bit muted compared to the original, but I didn’t have any such issue. On both of our first runs, we both had one image that was soft, though the original uploaded versions were sharp. I made a revision and over-sharpened the image in question, and the result matched, so I have no idea what happened here.

Jody had multiple copies made, and he had two back-to-back vertical bands on the left third of the images; on both of my versions, I have banding throughout (see example below), which I would expect would be most common. This is only noticeable on images with a plain background, such as sky; you’d never see it on busier images. I could see this being a problem for birders or wildlife shooters with a solid background. It’s a great fit for landscapers, though you might choose to be a bit more discerning with the images you go with.

The only other negative aspect on the printing is that the preceding and following months in the date boxes are not readable since they’re too small, which is disappointing. I’m not even sure why they put them on there. I meant to query them to see if it might be something they can resolve, but haven’t gotten to that yet.

Zazzle’s interface could use some work on their site, as the workspace is very small. Text caption placement was the single toughest thing to get right to make sure my alignment was uniform. Still, it’s doable, and with some time, it shouldn’t really cause a problem.

Overall, it’s a bit expensive, but you aren’t going to find one-offs for much less. I am rather happy with mine and it really does look very, very sharp. If not for the vertical banding, it very much looks and feels professional-grade. Again, if you use detailed images, you’ll not see this. If you want to see your work displayed in a quality calendar, I can strongly recommend Zazzle.

The following is my best example I can show with the banding that has plain and detailed portions. It is somewhat subtle, yet annoying. Casual viewers won’t think twice about it, but it is a photographer’s gripe to be sure. You’ll have to click on it, then click on it again on the following page to see the full-size image.

I took a week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day since I somehow managed to leave four vacation days unused through the summer. I’ve never taken a longer vacation this time of year before. I was originally thinking of heading to Canyonlands, but I finally got my wits and decided to head to some places I haven’t been to previously, but ones I’ve been wanting to see. Well, I have been to Grand Canyon when I was a kid with the family, but not with a camera.

White Sands

White Sands campsite

After White Sands, it was time to head to Grand Canyon, but since Bisti Wilderness (35 miles south of Farmington in northwest New Mexico) lies pretty much en route, I was planning to stop here overnight. The drive up takes quite awhile, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it by sunset after my 9:15 AM departure from White Sands. I was pushing for time, but arrived at the trailhead, threw my stuff together, walked the flat 1.6 miles out to the formations I was wanting to see as quickly as I could, and had about five minutes of light to work with on the egg formations. I had a wonderful sunset there and continued to shoot some other formations until dark when I hiked back to the trailhead. I had wanted to shoot sunrise as well, but it was overcast, and a snow system was arriving in the region. The drive to, and out of, Farmington and just into Arizona was painfully slow and very slick with a good bit of snow on the roads. In fact, just before I got to Farmington, the back end of the 4Runner went out of control; I ended up doing five to seven 45-degree skids between about 55 and 25 MPH. Thankfully, there was no traffic at this point and I managed to keep the 4Runner on the road.

Bisti Wilderness

I arrived at Grand Canyon only to find it totally fog-filled along with snow conditions with heavy 40 MPH winds. I got shut out the first night, and forecast didn’t look better for the second day. I ended up camping just south of the park entrance along a national forest road (FR328, for those who like to do the free thing like me). Thankfully, the second day saw patches of blue sky in the afternoon and I had plenty of light in the canyon. I even got a bit of color at sunset. The forecast was calling for a low of -4, but ended up getting to -28, I believe. The coldest I had ever camped previously was 8 degrees at Great Sand Dunes in 2010. I had tremendous conditions the third day, and the low temperature on January 1 got to -30! I’ve never been out when it’s been this cold, but I would’ve expected it to feel a lot colder. As it was, I stayed plenty warm, though as I rolled over in my sleeping bag around 3:30 AM, my zipper split. I still managed to stay warm as I was wearing my huge and very warm down coat, though there were cool spots. After sunrise on New Year’s Day, I headed for Moab, where I would take a look at my bag’s zipper. No go. I was planning to stay in this area for the final night, but decided to head for home after sunset. Overall, it was a very rewarding trip photographically, and I really, really enjoyed it. It’s also great to know that I really have no boundary, temperture-wise, on the low end of the scale.

Grand Canyon's last sunset of 2010

New

Old

(edit: all fall pictures are online in my recent gallery)

I didn’t totally forget about Colorado; I did manage to get one day’s worth of shooting. The following is one result.

Yet again, a full trip report will be detailed later. I need to quit taking trips so I can start working on them!

Myself shooting at Island Lake. Photo courtesy of John Liebel.

Titcomb Basin

Titcomb Basin

Gannett Peak (13,804') and Dinwoody Glacier