Aspens and Lava Rock

This area east of Cedar Breaks is one of the most remarkable I have seen anywhere in the Southwest... huge lava flows all around with thousands of aspens growing up right out of the piled rocks.  In the Fall, it's one of the most unique places I could imagine to enjoy the beautiful foliage. I was fighting the on-and-off rain showers for several days this year and it got frustrating at the time, but the atmosphere in the results that I did manage to get in between the sprinkles were well worth it. Couldn't have asked for a more perfect sky even if I had painted it myself. A lot of spots were already bare of leaves, but I found enough remaining here and there to make it very worthwhile.
Getting into some of my film stuff now.. this was shot on 6x7 format Fuji Velvia 100.

Head in the Clouds

A view from the top rim of Cedar Breaks, at 10,500ft. elevation.
Can't see it of course, but the wind was howling and spitting rain, trying to change over to snow, which it did later in the day, so I was only able to grab a few quick shots of it this year.  I always make a point to stop by this spot when heading down to the east side of the mountain to my favorite foliage area. I ran into a blizzard here on October 1 several years ago, so considering I arrived mid-October this year, it was not too bad I guess. You can see that the bottom of the cloud layer was at almost exactly the same level as the rim, obscuring the sky, but leaving the view of the multi-colored formations unhindered. Be sure to click on the image for the full size view of this one. 

Rainy Aspens

I still have more Valley of Fire stuff to go over later, but I feel like moving the subject on up to "color country" in Utah for a while, since that was the original objective of my trip.
I was a little behind the curve as far as the foliage in the higher elevations that I prefer this year, but the lower areas were still great and this area below a small lake that I really love is always beautiful, no matter what stage of the season. This image here is one of my favorites from the whole trip.. I've been trying to get that "perfect" aspen image for years and this might be as close as I ever get. I normally don't judge new work so quickly, but this one just hit me right away so I already have it framed and hanging in the Gallery.
It's just an easy quarter mile walk to get into this spot, but it was raining so I was debating to skip the location this year...ended up thinking that since I had come all this way, I had to give it a try.  I had to walk around holding both camera and umbrella together in one hand for half an hour, and kept busy constantly wiping drops off the lens, but I did catch some nice atmospheric shots, including this one... so glad I did it. You just never know where the good ones are going to come from. I normally go for maximum depth of field, but in this case the soft focus colors in the background just seem to compliment the crispness of the foreground trees really nicely. Maybe I should try some hand-held work more often:)

SkyWatch: Twilight Panorama

More from the Valley of Fire in Nevada: I spent the late afternoon shooting out in the area of the formations that you can see in the center of this view.. This was well after sunset and I was actually heading out to find a place to stay when I saw this gorgeous twilight sky out of the corner of my eye and just had to pull over and try to shoot a quick panorama.  Luckily I left my digital camera on it's tripod across the back seat of the car, rather than put it all away in the pack (I've learned NOT to do that:), so I was able to run out and make 5 vertical shots at 15 seconds each, which I have stitched together here.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.