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This landscape picture was taken in the fall from the Fairview High School parking lot overlooking the lake. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) can be seen in the foothills next to the Flatirons. It is a challenge to capture Boulder pictures with fall colors because most of the trees in the foothills are evergreens. Photographer Tips - Polarizers When taking scenic pictures of fall colors, often a polarizer can help to bring out the color contrasts. As you can see in this photo, the blues are quite saturated and even though the leaves of the trees are not at the fall peak, they have been drawn out with the polarizer. Some polarizers also provide a warming tint. Remember that the greatest polarization effect occurs when the sunlight direction is perpendicular to your line of sight; however, it is not always desirable to crank up the maximum effect. Sometime you may just want a little polarization impact. For best results, use a circular polarizer – it is more expensive, but will result in a higher quality shot.
This photo is a vertical orientation of Golden Ponds Park and Nature Area, which is located in Longmont, Colorado near the intersection of Hover and 3rd Ave. There are 4 ponds with scenic views of the Twin Peaks: Mt. Meeker and Long's Peak. It is a popular fishing spot, trailhead and location for pictures of the mountains. Photo Tip - Cropping This image is a crop of the previous one. Of course, when cropping, it is important to start with a good quality photo with high resolution. Why crop? For me it is a mental thing. When I look at a particular photo, I sometimes find my vision focusing on a different composition. It is a good day when the composition that I imagine can be obtained by simply cropping. As I look at both the horizontal and vertical versions of this scene, I realize that the horizontal one is a crop of the original as well. Note that in the horizontal picture, the reflection of the mountains is cropped a little; whereas it is not in the vertical. Since I usually try to crop with a “standard” aspect ratio of 3/2 to match the original, sometimes to get the desired width of view, the height is also affected. Personally, I don’t think cropping the mountain reflection in this case is a bad compromise.
This area is named after Vernon Golden who was a miner. He donated almost 100 acres to the City of Longmont. The park itself has about 3 miles of trails with many places to take great photos of the lake and mountain reflections. On most days, you will find people fishing, walking and biking around. Truly a beautiful spot to relax, exercise and enjoy the beauty of nature. Landscape photography here is best in either early spring or early fall when the trees have leaves, and the mountains have snow. Tip for Photographers - Focal Length There is a tendency to use a wide angle lens when doing scenic photography. It’s not a bad approach; however, often the photo can be more dramatic if a longer lens is used. Why? The longer lens will enable the background to be brought into the picture and emphasized. I am sure you recall taking landscape pictures or even a panoramic photos only to discover that the mountains are barely visible. The foreground looks good, but the background appears to be inconsequential. Although there is some debate, it is commonly stated that the human eye has an equivalent focal length of 50mm. This means that when you take a photo with a 50mm lens, the relative scale of the objects will be similar to what you see. If a 24mm or even a 16mm lens is used, the objects in the background will appear significantly smaller than what we see; and possibly what attracted us to that scene will no longer be evident. Often I will use a focal length between 70-100mm for shots like this one. It brings the background up close and as in this image, the duck is visible as a bonus effect.
