I'm all about the road trip I just love driving through cities and towns
especially small towns in the USA you get to meet all kinds of colorful
characters you get to see all kinds of shops cafes vehicles that the stuff that
you see is just unbelievable and I'm on my way through Utah and Moab a place
that I know quite well I've been coming there for years but this this part of
Colorado is completely new to me so tonight I'm spending the night in Grand
Junction so that in the morning I can drive to the crystal mill and get that
beautiful fall color shot that I've been after for years
as you can see I've been sleeping in the blunderbuss for the last two nights but
I'm absolutely sick to death of it last night when I got up for a peer banged my
head on the roof there's just no Headroom so I'm done with it
tonight I'm gonna spy all myself I'm checking into a hotel I gonna have a
nice long soak in a tub and get lovely and clean or a nice comfy bed but
tomorrow I'll get up super early head out to that shoe the life of a landscape
photographer is more miserable than most people realize lots of sleep deprivation
hemorrhoid inducing drives and three-star hotels and yet even with all
that misery and suffering that can't get enough of it
well it's 4:30 in the morning I'm in Grand Junction Colorado and I'm gonna
head out to the crystal mill now I've got two and a half hour drive I've got
my coffee and fully loaded up with fuel
shut up right ready to go let's get cracking
don't leave you can see me I hope you can but I've just hit the highway and I
can see lightning just peppering the landscape of the distance is absolutely
brilliant super dramatic I really hope I can get those conditions when I get to
the Crystal Bill
after the fireworks in the sky the Sun was just starting to rise and it was
time to get off this Highway the next 30 minutes of the drive were a
landscape photographers wet dream with lush autumn colors steep cliffs and
early morning mist just look at this business so I'm driving through a place
called Pitkin County in Colorado and I just cannot comprehend how spectacular
these autumn colors are it's absolutely gorgeous
it's like a a carpet of bright yellow colors and that's even before the Sun
has risen and it's a cloudy overcast day imagine when the Sun hits these they'll
just set on fire and just glow so I'm really excited and I expect I'm gonna
get some good shots okay I do realize that this is a lot of dashcam footage
but come on just look at these colors with scenery like this all you've got to
do is just show up and switch on your camera in fact it almost feels like
cheating it's that easy well minus the thousands of miles of driving of course
and the hemorrhoids I don't mind admitting that this has got
to be one of the most beautiful drives I've ever have ever done I just can't
get my head around these police autumn colors it's story spectacular
I'd heard reports that the road to the Crystal mill was pretty brutal but even
though I was equipped with all-wheel drive and winter tires there were a few
sections that were testing the limits of my suspension and it didn't fancy the
idea of breaking down in the middle of nowhere with the thunder and lightning
storm rolling in at this point the roads so sketchy I think I'm gonna bail and
just hike the rest of the way it's about four miles so I took me an hour and a
half to get there but I'm not bailing now after thousands of miles of driving
so I just hope this thunder and lightning doesn't get me if not it's
just over there there's an entrance to a cave which is kind of weird
this area used to have active silver mining in fact the ghost town of Crystal
is a former silver mining camp now despite the doom lid and atmosphere of
the day and the challenges of the road and I was too close to quit so off I
ventured into the elk mountains like a bowlegged lightning rod so it's occurred
to me that I'm walking through a thunder and lightning storm in the forest
there's lightning everywhere and it's probably not a wise idea to be walking
around with three tripods and being like a walking lightning conductor so I've
put my tripod over there by that rock we sat under this overhang hopefully it
gives me a bit of protection but yeah it's probably wise just to stay off the
trail and stay stay hidden for a bit still be sketchy so I waited out the
worst of the storm and after an hour of hiking I was rewarded with this majestic
Vista orgasm so after a very soggy hi and a bit of dodging thunder and
lightning finally here at the crystal mill and is absolutely gorgeous these
are the perfect conditions this is
everything that I wanted it to be I love this soft light and I love wispy rain
clouds that come in and out at the scene it's a beautiful mood what I also love
is when you get this lovely contrast of gloomy gray clouds that have no color
against these gorgeous aspen trees that are just bursting with yellow and yellow
and gray gray for me are a beautiful combination so I could not have asked
for anything more so what I'm gonna do get down to the river try some
composition and then go down the opposite direction and shoot back
towards the mill and try some compositions there but when I found the
composition that I like I'll show you how I got there and what I did well
Mother Nature had different plans for me it started raining so hard that I just
gave up on the GoPro and then tried using my phone to film the tutorial but
even that got so soggy it could not focus so I finally found my shot books I
can't give you a tutorial yet because I've had to take my camera off the
tripod because it's getting drowned it will not stop raining it is pouring and
even though I've got water proofs on I'm still pretty soggy so if it clears
up and I get a little bit of a quiet spot with no rain then I'll do a
tutorial and you can see how I got this lovely composition I got it's pretty
sweet in terms of video tutorial that was a bit of a disaster and I got some
really nice shots and I spent a while trying different compositions got some
good shots and then thought right well I'll I'll shoot the video tutorial for
you and then as soon as I started filming it the heavens opened up and it
was monsoon time so I tried and everything was getting drowned my camera
was getting drowned the GoPro was getting drowned even cried with my phone
and that was getting drowned and then all of these tourists started arriving
and I was getting cold and shivery and this this just was completely drenched
so I thought sorry I'll just bail luckily I got a ride out with some
Vietnamese tourists that was really nice of them and so now I've just got back to
the car gonna crank this blower get warm and they'll show you what I got
so this is the shot that I was trying to shoot the tutorial for but with no look
I just love those blue layers in the valley way off in the distance and you
can really tell how wet everything was so the circular polarizer came in very
handy
for this shot I moved further downriver and got really low to the ground to
balance out the building with those delicious textures in the white water I
went for a cooler tonality because I remember shivering my nips off at the
time on this one I had to shoot three vertical shots and then stitch them
together as a panorama and my goal with this shot was to capture the entire
River as it carves relentlessly through the valley
of all of the shots from that day this one is my absolute favorite the slate
gray sky really sets the tone for this shot and I love that lens distortion
that comes as a result of getting lower to the ground so let me take you through
how I got this shot of what I did so looking at this the screen recording
that I'm doing if you look to the left there you'll see the Sun poked through
just for this little moment in time and it lit these rocks beautifully now
usually I'll polarize that I'll turn it pulverize it and it'll kill all of that
glare but in this case I really liked how that looks so I left it in now this
is a square crop but in order to get that shot I had to do a two horizontal
shot stitch and I'll show you the raw files now so this is the top frame and
even with 18 millimeters on a full frame Sony a7r - it's just not wide enough so
I took that shot and then I moved the camera down a little bit and this is the
next shot so you can see I've got G Austin off material there to stitch
everything together if I go back to the top shot and I had a little bit of extra
space there in the sky because I knew when I stitched them together I would
lose some of that so stitch those two together and I ended up with this and
I'll go back to the raw files again you can see those are just a raw file so
they're very dull they're very flat looking it's almost like a hitch D our
image I basically pulled up all of the shadows and pulled down the highlights
and especially in the water there and then once I stitch them together
I then cropped it and then I got to work with contrast and a few color
adjustments and I really liked the end result I just love this this motion of
the water coming in it kind of frames the shot it comes in and then it goes
out and of course the mill just looks fantastic because I'm lower down so
you've got this lens distortion we're just kind of making it look a bit more
imposing as it juts up into the sky all in all that's my favorite shot from that
day couldn't have asked for more this road is
of the worst roads I've been on it sir it's not the easiest route to get on you
definitely need 4x4 the guys that pulled me out of here were in an SUV so I could
have made it but I just didn't fancy trashing my tires and scraping my
paintwork
so I'm ready to get out of here we're really desperate for a coffee and their
next stop Moab. Ugh..... me grapes.