A recent visit to Colorado did not go exactly as planned, but we were still able to take in some views on the famed Million Dollar Highway that is north of Silverton. What a fantastic driving road with views that go on for miles. At least in the summer, there are no lack of amazing mountain towns to visit in a sports car to take advantage of all the sweepers, hairpins, and twisties on the roads in between all nestled in stunning setting after stunning setting.
Telephoto Dreamscape Views of Sand Dunes in Colorado
This is my second series of photos from Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado (wide angle first series here), this time featuring all images made with a telephoto lens (Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master). You may think for landscape photography that automatically it’s best to use a wide angle lens. Many times that is the case, but when you are very far from the subject, even a very large subject like sand dunes, a telephoto lens can bring you in close, and produce a unique looking landscape image. As I was driving in to Sand Dunes National Park, I thought the sand dunes themselves looked fake, like CGI. There were this soft focus, creamy aberration before more solid, corporeal mountains. As I was leaving the park, I pulled over and took out the telephoto lens to capture these dreamscape like images. Tell me the sand dunes do not look like they were put into the photos as digitally created features?
Photography sometimes take risks with amazing results
This is another instance of how my prolific rural land real estate work takes me to new and amazing places, like Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. The client actually wanted pictures of the sand dunes, so I was being paid to be there to make these photographs. I thought I was wasting my time making the long drive from Alamosa (45 minutes away) to the sand dunes because cloud cover was very heavy and the sun was nowhere to be seen. However, in my experience, the skies do open up just in time, and that was very much the case this time. The risk was worth it and paid off spectacularly as I was able to make dramatic sunset images of the sand dunes, and I even stopped later once the sun was gone from the main park itself, for telephoto shots of the dunes from afar, which I will share in another blog post. My advice is, it is always worth it to take the risk to potentially get the photos you want. At most you will waste time, but imagine if I had stayed at the hotel and saw this sunset from the hotel window instead of on the dunes themselves?
