This was a hair-blowing-in-the-wind rocker kind of a sunset in the, well, Rockies. Can't you just imagine some mad riffs added to this timelapse as the audio component? A mini-music video, in other words!
This Week in Mobile
This week in smartphone photography, we carry on from the previous update to bring you a few more images from yesterday's adventures in the great autumnal outdoors with surprisingly mild weather and already-yellowing tamaracks!
The Way the Wind Blows
Today, my trusted (but needy!) canine and I briefly visited one of the national parks in the area on what looks to be one of the last warm days of the season. Mandatory "pics or it didn't happen" image is as follows:
Places like this are always fun to photograph with a fisheye lens—that I've yet to process—but my smartphone captures aren't too shabby. Of course, it is Nature that does most of the work.
And, what's now becoming customary for me, though I'm still learning and experimenting: a looping timelapse documenting the subtle movements of golden autumn leaves on the shores of this glacial lake.
Autumn Hiking
When I first moved to the Middle-of-Nowhere, Rocky Mountains from a large metropolis resembling a box of concrete, I was surprised that autumn, especially its early phase, was considered a shoulder season.
After all, there is no better time to go hiking on a sunny day before the first snow arrives. It is warm enough to wear a t-shirt, yet breezy enough, even slightly damp, not to sweat. And the sights, no, the full-sense experience, is beyond imaginable, certainly beyond what a camera could capture.
So where are all the tourists?!
On second thought, all those visitors can stay home, leaving these boundless mountains to my possessive self. My possessive self and a couple of canine friends, to be exact. Bringing another human or two along isn't a bad idea either: make them carry that bear spray, in case a specimen trying to get plump for winter runs across your path.
And on one of those damp hopefully-bear-free forest paths, you might come across certain otherwordly sights.
Or was that just the interplay of sunlight and the shadows?
This part of the Rockies has every autumn color, but red, as the famed maple is not native here. No, my mistake, it does feature red, too: those huckleberry bushes drying in the sun.
Other than that, the landscape is dominated by the evergreens that are still, well, green, though no longer verdant, and sprinkles of aspen and tamaracks turning golden.
And a sea of blue.
Above and below.
Rocky Mountain Sunset
You know what makes a striking pink-black-and-yellow sunset even more so?
When you can actually see the clouds create fantastical shapes:
Map test (ignore)
Aspen Autumn
Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse
Being an admirer of All Things Moon, I, of course, knew that this weekend was going to involve one of the most stunning (and ominous!) sights known to man, that is, a total lunar eclipse. I also knew that the conditions were going to be good: mild weather, few clouds. This made this event rather different from its precursor that I photographed last October.
Unfortunately, I did not have the time to locate an aesthetically pleasing vantage point to record the Moon rise, which in my part of the North American continent coincided with a partial eclipse. This made the Moon resemble its own crescent, though much brighter and seemingly larger than one would look.
The proverbial lemonade out of lemons ended up looking like this:
Glacial Solitude
If I can no longer swim in the lake, even in a wetsuit, due to near-freezing night-time temperatures, I can at least stare at the abandoned beach and the recurrent waves, completely alone, save for the company of seagulls.