Colorado: Grizzly and Lenawee Peaks

This is why I love Colorado.

We took the day and drove over three passes, enjoying the mountain vistas. Even though it was cloudy most of the day, the clouds were constantly changing. Although they were beautiful, it made shooting pictures a bit more challenging than usual.

This is taken at the top of Loveland Pass (11,990 ft, 3655 m). I did hike a bit up to the top of a ridge, and took a number of shots to the west and east, but a fast moving storm prevented me from taking more. I'm not a big fan of standing on a 12,000 ft ridge with lightning striking just up the ridge from me.

So, this will be a place I come back to in better weather with tripod in tow.

For this shot, I took four exposure bracketed photos, then used HDR Efex to merge them. I used the preset Deep format, added a bit more contrast, desaturated the blues, and adjusted the highlights. In order to give the shot a bit more detail, I then overlayed a black and white version over it but decreased the opacity to about 40%.

I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend!