Colorado in October

I am so very behind on sharing things here. My old computer was struggling to edit photographs and share them as well. It was a pain to do and so I just avoided it. But, I recently purchased a beautiful new laptop, one that is powerful and fast, and so I am getting back on track with all my images finally.

In October, Scott and I went to Colorado to hear one of our climbing idols speak. We also made some time for climbing and camping in the mountains. It was a quick trip, but we had wonderful weather and were able to see some beautiful things.

Our first day was spent climbing in the Clear Creak Canyon, near Golden, Colorado. It was a stunning area, maybe even one of my favorites that we have climbed in. That night we camped in Guanella Pass, which is just past Georgetown, Colorado. We were the only ones camping out there (that we saw), and were able to find a stunningly beautiful and quite campsite in the subalpine forest. Our campsite was around 11,000 feet in elevation, which I felt the effects of when we woke up the next morning. There was snow on the ground, and the creek near by had lots of ice formed over it. It was a cold night for camping, but one of the most memorable ones for me.

 

The next day we woke up and tried to keep warm with tea and eggs and sausage. We had plans to try to hike Mt. Bierstadt (a 14,000 foot peak just up the pass) but when we woke up I was feeling the effects of the elevation (loss of appetite, headache), and we decided we just didn’t have the time or the provisions to do so. We ended up driving to the parking lot for the trail to the peak and explored some of the shorter trails from the same parking lot. After taking some photographs we went back to pack up our campsite, and I wandered around shooting some more in the frosty, late-morning light.

Scott, excited about being in the alpine air. Mt. Bierstadt is behind him.

Scott grabbed this one of me; I think it sums up my personality pretty well 🙂

The double exposure series of my feet continues.

Leaves

In my last post I mentioned that my work is now dealing with collections. I have just started with this process, and so have only been working with one collection so far. Every fall I have the tendency to pick up a few leaves that I find nice and pin them to my walls for a bit. The leaves actually sparked my first collection piece. I started by placing the leaves on my copy machine and making simple black and white photocopies I also scanned them to see what I thought of a digital, color image of the collection. I have over 200 leaves copied and I finally had to force myself to stop picking them up. Once I had a large number scanned I started to piece them into a large Photoshop file, which is what I am sharing with you all today.

 

Once I printed it out I realized that this is not the direction I want to go. The color and the format of the digital print are not doing what I want them to do, and so I will be leaving this behind for the time being at least. I debated sharing this here, but decided that I wanted this blog in part to be a place to show my progress and thought process on my work. I will be printing some copper plates this week and so will be sharing those with you as I work on them. Be on the lookout for another post soon!

Time in the pasture.

About a month ago Scott and I went to his parents’ farm for dove hunting season. We went out in the evening and sat in their pasture watching for birds. I, however, was very distracted by how beautiful it was out there.

We sat on buckets, low to the ground and surrounded by tall grass fronds catching the rich evening light as they swayed in the breeze. Not far away was a group of wild sunflowers in full bloom. A small pond was in front of us, and it was mesmerizing to watch the giant dragonflies swoop down to catch bugs in the low, golden sun. The only noises we heard were bugs buzzing, birds chirping, and the sound of the wind in the grass. It was almost dream like.

314/365 – Low

This is what happens when you put the camera on the ground and press the shutter.

And yay for getting sick just over a week after I got healthy.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.

311/365 – Rain Boots!

I have been wanting rain boots since freshman year. I ordered some then, but Target didn’t have them in stock, and after nearly 4 months and still no boots I just cancelled my order. Since then I never took the time to go get some, and didn’t really see any I loved. Today, it was raining all day and I just decided that I needed some rain boots. I was sick of having wet feet any time it rained. I went to DSW with Elliot, and stumbled on these beauties! I was so excited! They are so different from most rain boots I see around campus (which is what I wanted) and they are so soft and warm on the inside! And, they look like something I would doodle in class almost, so they were just perfect! But, of course, as soon as we got outside it was sunny out.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.

290/365 – driving through the rain

Real creative title, I know.

We had some crazy weather today. It was warm right away in the morning, and super super windy. Then all of a sudden we were in tornado watches and warnings. Every radio station was being interrupted every few minutes for the emergency broadcast or whatever. It poured, that is for sure, and the wind kept right up the entire time, but nothing as bad as I was hoping for (I love storms so so much!). It was a bit of a let down really, haha. But, we did get lots of rain which we desperately needed. And I did get this picture, which I like. And I did get a video that I kind of like and may upload tomorrow.

Oh, and to ease the worry of anyone out there (aka my parents), Elliot was driving his truck when I took this.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.

289/365 – Fall Rain

Yes I am aware that almost all of my titles lately have “fall” in them, but hey, it is fall and I love fall.

It finally rained today, which we needed desperately. So of course after teaching I went outside with my camera and took some reverse lens shots of the drops on the leaves.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.

34/52 – Simple

It has been such a long time since I have done a 52 week shot. I took this on the same day that Whitney and I went on out shoot (it took me a while to get around to editing it). After such a failed attempt at Raven Run (where I wanted to do my self-portrait) we just went to my backyard where I decided to do a simple head shot.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.

Cumberland Falls

I totally forgot that I never got around to uploading the rest from our day trip to Cumberland Falls. So here we go…

When we got there, we had to cross this bridge to get to the parking lot, and we both loved it so we walked down the the river and took a bunch of pictures of it.

As I mentioned in my first post of our trip, Cumberland Falls is one of two waterfalls where it is possible to see a moonbow. Obviously this makes it a huge tourist attraction, even during the day, so we had to battle for good spots to get pictures for the first bit of our hike. The park has 3 main overlooks (if I am remembering correctly) built for the waterfall; one at the top, one very close to the bottom of it, and then one further away. This shot was taken from the overlook that was closest the the bottom.

This one was taken while hiking, just looking off of the path. After those three main overlooks the number of people that we encountered went way down, it was kind of funny.

There then was a path that led down to this beach area (no swimming allowed though) that had such beautiful fine, white sand. There were quite a few people here again, but we hiked down the beach back towards the waterfall and after climbing over some boulders and piles of logs jammed from when the river is high, we were all alone and had a perfect view.

We then continued our hike, heading for our main goal for the day, Dog Slaughter Falls. The entire hike out there we didn’t encounter a single person, and on the way back, only two people. It was so nice to have the trail to ourselves, and especially on such a pretty hike.

And here are just some details from our hike.

I should mention, that we never actually made it to Dog Slaughter Falls. We had been hiking for a couple of hours, and it was already 5 o’clock or later, and we came upon a sign that told us that the trail was closed due to erosion, and that we had to take a detour. We didn’t know how much further we had until the falls, or how much the detour would add to the hike, and we were definitely not prepared to hike back in the dark, so we just turned around. Hopefully we will be able to get out there once again and actually make it.

 

287/365 – Bottling Up Fall

Saturday, October 24

I am ready to not be sick. Especially after last night.

I thought of this idea while raking my front yard yesterday afternoon.

Become a fan on Facebook at Abigail Thompson Photography. And be sure to check out the Etsy shop I opened with my sister.