Long’s Peak and Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park
Fall is a fabulous time of year to visit the national parks. Crowds are usually smaller than in the summer, temperatures are cooler, and some of our national parks have glorious fall colors. With so many to choose from, where should you go? Which national parks will provide the best photographic opportunities in the fall?
Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
What are the best national parks to photograph in the fall? Here are my choices, grouped by state and province from west to east. This list includes the favorites I have been to, plus the ones I most want to see based on the recommendations of the photographers I trust, like Tim Fitzharris and QT Luong. More about them later.
Headed for Colorado this fall (or any other time of year)? Welcome to my complete Colorado fall color photography and travel guide with 136 photos, 18 maps, and over 100 pages of information (if you print it all out). I cover some of the best known fall color locations in Colorado, and most of these locations look great any other time of year. Spend anywhere from two days to two weeks exploring the beautiful Colorado Rockies at a gorgeous time of year.
Marshall Pass is a beautiful fall color drive in southern Colorado, and still pretty much a secret. It does not turn up on most lists of the most beautiful fall color drives in Colorado. It is a beautiful drive with a lot of fall color photo opportunities.
Bear Lake, Longs Peak and the Keyboard of the Winds.
Vet sign, original and optimized
Digital cameras have a tonality range that is much more limited than what our eyes can see. Because of that, in some situations the digital file falls far short of what our eyes see when we click the shutter. When I “optimize” an image, my goal is to use software to create an image that is as close as possible to what I was seeing when I clicked the shutter. This photo is an example.
Nineteen years ago I was looking through some of my images and decided my portrait photography was lacking. That is when I got the bright idea of working with a professional model.
St. Joseph (lower left) and Kansas City Missouri from the air.
Constellations (Sagittarius and Scorpius), Meteor (left center), and Saturn (above the scorpion’s back).
Norwalk Lutheran Church, Manistee Michigan.
Samantha, July 10, 2011, RR tracks, Ohio.
When I created this image 14 years ago this evening, shooting on railroad tracks was popular and still pretty much an accepted thing. I have several railroad track images in my collection. All kinds of professional and amateur photographers created images on railroad tracks. A Google image search will turn up hundreds of photos. Careful photographers chose long, straight sections of track with great visibility and they paid attention.
4th of July parade collage in chronological order. Individual photos follow.
Every year I photograph the annual 4th of July parade in Lamoni Iowa. In addition to the 14 “selects” I share below, I discuss the equipment I use, the number of photos, and at the end of this article I describe what I look for when I photograph a parade. “Selects” is a newspaper/magazine word for the best photos (the photos selected) out of all the photos created. An editor working on an event article might say to a photographer, “Send me a dozen of your selects”, so the photographer would send 12 images out of all the photos that were created at the event.
Acadia National Park is 109 nears old today. The photos in this article were taken by me in Acadia National Park, October 2017.
Last Light on El Capitan. My first trip to Yosemite Valley, December 30, 1990.
What a great idea! It started with Abe Lincoln, 161 years ago today. He was the first President to create “public lands” and it started with Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove.
I received a text message on a Saturday night from a very pregnant young woman. Sarah told me she might deliver early and she wanted to know if I could shoot Sunday morning at 7:45 am. It was her only chance to shoot that week. Of course I said yes.
Metaphid Jumping Spider
When a rare photo opportunity comes your way, jump on it (pun intended). You have no idea if or when it will happen again.
Google maps tracking for July 19, 2024.
If you have the Google Maps app on your phone, you can turn on or off the ability of the app to track your travels. Some people like this and some don’t. You can turn tracking on and off any time you want. The map does not drop bread crumbs that track your exact routes. It draws straight lines between stops. Each round symbol on the map shows one of my stops for the day. Most of these are photo stops but some are for food, gas, or other necessities. By using two fingers on the map on your phone’s screen, you can zoom in or out on the map.
Trip Log, September 28-29, 2024.
Before there was Mapquest or Google Maps, there was me! (Tongue-in-cheek font.)
Sunset, “The Window”, from the Chisos Basin.
Big Bend National Park was officially established June 12, 1944. Generally I don’t like deserts. I like mountains, high altitude lakes and streams, cool breezes, and pine scented air. So imagine my surprise when I fell in love with Big Bend on my very first visit.
Children flee a napalm attack in Tr?ng Bàng on June 8, 1972. Left to right: Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. The “Napalm Girl” photograph galvanized an anti-war movement in the United States.
Associated Press/AP
53 years ago today a photographer clicked his shutter and one of the world’s iconic images was created. Officially known as “The Terror of War”, until recently it has been attributed to AP photographer Nick Ut who won a Pulitzer Prize for this image.
Blue Jay, Whitefish Point, Michigan’s U.P.
My Northern Michigan weekend photography workshops are usually in the fall, but this one was on Memorial Day Weekend. At each workshop we take a full day to go on a field trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
DaiQing Tana, Columbus Ohio.
The annual Asian Festival in Columbus Ohio falls on Memorial Day Weekend. Daiqing Tana is from Central Asia. She has a beautiful and unique singing voice and she is a talented folk dancer. She mostly sings Mongolian music and does dances that are typical of Central Asia. She performs with the group HAYA. They were in town for the Asian Festival.
Portrait collage of some of the people I have worked with. To fit this format some of these images are seriously cropped. Click to see a larger version.
My first photo shoot with a professional mode was with Sarah. Before our shoot she had checked me out. And as for me, I had checked her references. I learned she was well known and highly respected. But I was more of an unknown quantity to her. She did not know anyone who knew me. She wanted to have an in-person meeting at a popular outdoor mall. She showed up with a male companion who hovered not too far away. She asked a lot of questions. Part way through our get acquainted meeting she nodded at him and he walked away. I knew I had passed some kind of test. She was doing her due diligence. Unhappy things have happened to models who do not thoroughly check out the photographers they plan on working with. Photographers have had unhappy experiences too. Once Sarah was confident about me, we scheduled the shoot.
Vietnam Women’s Memorial
Eastern Bluebird
Based on the theory that you can create nice images with inexpensive camera gear, these photos were all taken with my “toy camera” and a $239, 55-250mm telephoto lens. I am impressed with the job this lens is doing. These are recent examples.
Nicole in a church foyer.
The Graceland University choir were performing at a church in Grove City Ohio, and I was in the foyer to take casual photos of some of the choir members. The cool colored evening light was streaming in the north facing foyer windows, turning everything blue. I clicked the shutter at 7:08:40 pm. The light is not good. Sometimes I love blue, but not for this image. The image also looks hazy and lacking in contrast.
Nicole, casual portrait, Grove City Ohio, May 7, 2018.
Seven years ago, the Graceland University Choir (from Lamoni Iowa) was on tour and I caught their performance at a church in Grove City Ohio. I was in the lobby taking casual portraits of the choir. This young women happened to step into the sunlight that was streaming through a lobby window, making for wonderful, warm “short side” lighting. Short side lighting means the light is shining on the side of the face that is away from the camera.
Top: Original image. Bottom: Optimized version.
This before and after version is one more example. Your best images deserve to be optimized.
The Conference Chamber, The Auditorium, Independence Missouri. My favorite image of the morning.
I was photographing a Communion service at a church conference in Missouri using two DSLR cameras and an iPhone. All told, during this one service and the short time before and after, I created 354 images. So how many “selects” did I pick? When an editor asks you for “selects” from an event, that means they want your best images in chronological order. The editor will narrow that down even further when deciding which images to publish. Several photographers were covering this event as a team so I didn’t have to worry about capturing everything. This article explores the selection process between taking the photos and the final published images.
Blue-winged Teal
I take our dog for regular walks at our local lakes. I watch the waterfowl come and go with the seasons. I always have my “toy” camera gear with me, just in case (link below). For the last two weeks I watched the number of Blue-winged Teal slowly drop from 54 to 11. I wanted a photograph but they were always way out in the lake and too far away for a good image. And then it happened.