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10-7-09 thru 10-12-09
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First things first...by now you should know that I am a HUGE proponent of Canon products, but I must say that if one was looking to upgrade to the Rebel XSi, I would advise against it. I have found that this camera "lies" to me quite often. It seems that whenever there is a brighter light source to contend with, this camera struggles with exposure. It will tell me I am metered right and even after I snap a shot, the histogram tells me I am right on. But, every time the picture is extremely over-exposed. I am thinking about parting ways with the XSi and I am either going to fix the XT or buy a new one (they are very cheap right now). I have taken quite a few pics with this camera yet and the only thing I can see it doesn't have any issues with are night shots/long exposures. Pointing away from a bright source, i.e. the sun, it does just fine. But like I said, facing toward it...forget about it. I have also heard this same problem reported by many other photogs also. At first I thought I just had a faulty camera.
Anyway...Meghan and I had a trip to Colorado planned several months in advance and I was looking forward to some fall colors in the Rockies. As it turned out, we picked a very bad week to visit.
The setting sun shorlty after taking the road. There is a small sun dog to the left of the image, but it's hard to see.
Faint anti-crespecular rays. They were actually a bit more faint than this even at the time.
Skipping ahead. We spent the first couple of days in Colorado Springs visiting her dad. The weather absolutely did not cooperate the entire trip. It was cloudy/overcast the entire and and seemed to either rain and/or snow every day.
The "Kissing Camels" at the Garden of the Gods.
This fella was rather interesting. He had the holster and all. Not really sure what his story was.
Balanced Rock. This thing was tricky to figure out. That is a TON of weight resting on one little point there. The thing looked like it could fall over at any moment. The bright white skies pretty much zeroed out any hope of HDR possibilities, which I am really starting to look in to.
That night it snowed. It was the first snow I had seen this season. Obviously wasn't much, but I had to get a shot.
Later that day we made a trip to Gold Camp Road. This would end up being the highlight of the trip. Well, at least for me. This guy was sitting right along the side of the road along with 5-6 others, just minding their own business. They were certainly oblivious to humans.
I believe this was on Bear something-or-other Road. Finally some fall colors.
We realized that we weren't going to be able to make it to Gold Camp Road the way we drove, so we turned around and headed back. This was one of the others that was sitting next to the road before.
Now we are on Upper Gold Camp Road. At first I was really, REALLY bummed about that fog, but later on I would actually be glad it was there.
Some of the scenes were just awesome. The color really looked like this, with the dense fog and that sun beating through, illuminating the water droplets and giving them that awesome orange tint. I did notice though that under these lighting conditions it tends to leave behind lots of artifacts in the darker areas, which is a no-no for photo sales. I believe it is the XSi doing this since I never really noticed it with the XT.
Continuing on. The fog was starting to get lighter and lighter the higher we went. I want to say this road took you up to over 9k feet, but I'm not certain.
That fog would rush in and cruise UP the mountain right over those tree tops. I REALLY wish I would have grabbed the HV20 to timelapse this. It was pretty awesome.
Another mountain top trying to peak through the fog...and.....what is this?! Blue skies? That was the first time on the trip since we left that we saw blue.
Still climbing.
It would clear out, then this happened again. More very thick, dense fog. The colors dulled again giving off that orangish tint.
The higher we climbed, the clearer it became. The roads were not very pleasing though. They were narrow to begin with, and the few times I looked over the edge were big mistakes. All I could think of was going over and how much that would....suck.
Ahhh, finally getting to all blue!
Starting to reach the snow line.
This was heading back down. Later in the afternoon the fog started to lift a little more. This shot was when we were dead even with the underside of that lifting fog. Very cool scene.
More mule deer on the way down.
This doe evidently wanted no part of this buck. It came close twice, only to be chased away twice.
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