Caught a cold just before the photo adventure began and lost my voice – aaagggh. Nothing worse than trying to teach without a voice! But I managed, and it’s finally coming back. A few days of wandering the country without speaking to anyone will help it fully recover.

We just finished our adventure today, and everyone made some great pictures. I’m always amazed by the different viewpoints the group will have when we’re all in the same general area! During the workshop we went up Last Dollar Road from the Telluride side – there’s a great fence that runs into an aspen grove there. Several of us “worked it” in different angles. But in color, the bright yellow leaves of the aspens, the yellow-green of the grasses and other hues all seemed to distract from the wonderful design that I saw in the fence and the trees – opposing lines. To keep it less busy as it’s already a design-ful image, I chose to convert it to black and white and then added a sepia effect, using a user preset in Lightroom. This gives the image a more timeless feel, to me, and it resonates with my feelings of never wanting to lose those wonderful fences. They represent history, ‘the old west’, and to me speak of a rugged, hard life of the past. Never mind that this one probably now delineates someone’s 6 million dollar estate- the fences still represent something special about the west.

More images to come as I review/process while on the road. I’m heading out tomorrow to where – I don’t know yet! Storm system is upon us and I fear all the aspens leaves will be down very soon – at least the yellow ones.