The Relaxed Photo Thread

[OldMacs4Me]

Been thinking of doing this for a long time, but finally getting around to it. Stories and Photos are intertwined. Once in a blue moon a single photo tells a complete story. The other 99+% of the time it will benefit greatly from additional information. That can be in the form of text or sometimes a second photo or different cropping. As the title suggest the posting guidelines are intended to be very relaxed as I think your photos and stories are of much greater interest than defining how you can or cannot tell them.

Please feel free to post your own contributions.

As or if the thread progresses guidelines can be implemented should the need arise.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Will kick it off with this photo that either my wife or I took on a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in September of 1990. Shot on Kodacolor II/100 film and digitized via camera.

To someone familiar with the western Rockies this photo tells a story of a recent and powerful flash flood.

However adding a second photo fills in a lot of details that the first photo fails to convey. Zoom in to full resolution if it's hard to read.

If you want to know more, then by all means visit this website.

The Lawn Lake Flood | Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives

history.denverlibrary.org

 

[jeremz1ne]

What would be awesome if a updated photo of the same place in 2024 to see the change that has happened

 

[OldMacs4Me]

What would be awesome if a updated photo of the same place in 2024 to see the change that has happened

That it would. But not from me, just too far away now. Maybe we have a Colorado or Wyoming photog who has something more recent on tap.

The fun thing about photographing Rocky Mountain Park, is that it is a huge area with great photo ops, but very few cliché shots.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Gonna switch gears. These are different croppings of the same frame. Shot on Kodacolor II/100 film on Sept 15, 1991.

The initial story is that I have absolutely no memory of taking this shot. It was the first day in transit to what would be a total of 19 days away from civilization. With 8 rolls of 24 exposure film, I was being stingy. So if there were any signs back in 1991, I did not take a reference shot. A bit of a search with Google image match and I rediscovered that this was an overlook of the Dolores River. It's located on Highway 141 south of Grand Junction Colorado.

While playing with various croppings I noticed something man made along the cliff. If you zoom in to full resolution it shows clearly in this third image.

Another trip to the search engines revealed a fascinating story. It's fairly long, so read as much or as little as may be of interest.

An Engineering Marvel: Colorado's Hanging Flume

westernmininghistory.com

 

[deep diver]

The fun thing about photographing Rocky Mountain Park, is that it is a huge area with great photo ops, but very few cliché shots.

I'm heading to Moab in a couple of weeks for 5 days. My last trip there was 31 years ago One of my goals is to take as few cliche images as I can. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully I like some of them enough to post here.

The idea of a "relaxed thread" is very appealing.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I'm heading to Moab in a couple of weeks for 5 days. My last trip there was 31 years ago One of my goals is to take as few cliche images as I can. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully I like some of them enough to post here.

The idea of a "relaxed thread" is very appealing.

Sounds like a great trip. Would love to get back there someday, but that is not too likely. So many cliche shots there that you may find it challenging to avoid.

 

[jeremz1ne]

I'm heading to Moab in a couple of weeks for 5 days. My last trip there was 31 years ago One of my goals is to take as few cliche images as I can. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully I like some of them enough to post here.

The idea of a "relaxed thread" is very appealing.

that sounds fun, enjoy the trip and be safe

 

[OldMacs4Me]

While there are not many cliché photos associated with Rocky Mountain National Park, there are the Whistling Marmots. To make it a true cliché we captured this guy right on the Great Divide. Surprised he so graciously posed for us, with our two dogs barking their brains out in the car just a few feet away.

There were some deer shots but I'm afraid quality wise they fall into the cull category. Still those weren't the only critters.

And of course;

All shots Kodacolor-II, ASA-100 film. Nikormat FtN. Probably the Tamron 28-70mm zoom lens, possibly the Nikkor 105mm ƒ-2.5 lens. Copied via the Nikon Z-50.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Had intended to include this with the previous post. Both images are fairly severely cropped. To be brutal a 28-70mm Tamron zoom lens is not even in the top 100 choices for a good birder lens. It is however a solid travel lens.

Kodacolor Gold II 35mm film, ASA-100. Rocky Mountain National Park. September 1990.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Most of what I am doing this winter revolves around digitizing old slides & negs. Some are not my own. Another reason for creating the relaxed thread.

From a roll my wife shot and posted with her kind permission. She was learning to use the family SLR after the death of her own Minolta Himatic. Somewhere she found a a large field with tons of purple Irises and these are some the results.

From Kodacolor II - ASA 100, 35mm film.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

More from my better half. Same roll of film.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

After multiple distractions I am finally getting back to the Rocky Mountain National Park set.

While RMNP is home to Alberta Falls and Chasm Falls and both are photogenic, neither is exactly iconic. However there are also lots of little streams that will grab your attention, even late in the season.

Two takes at the same location somewhere in the Park. As always both are best viewed zoomed into full resolution.

Kodacolor II ASA 100 (C-41).

 

[deep diver]

I'm still in Moab. We decided to stay in today. My 28 year old son and his dog are hurting. His 67 year old father is ready for snother hike, but I don't enjoy solo hiking. There's something special about the shared experience.

I'm posting these right out of the camera. They need a little bit of PP to clean them up.

This first set is from Arches National Park.

 

[deep diver]

These are taken from Dead Horse Point at Dead Horse State Park. The river is the Colorado.

 

[Allyance]

I took a lot of trips when we were doing the communications designs for military hospitals, but never had very much spare time. On this trip to Fairbanks, we went site seeing on a Sunday. These machines were just abandoned in place.

Built for mining gold. Hard to know how much gold it took just to build these machines.

 

[bousozoku]

I left California as a child. I took a trip from the east coast to see if I could afford to live in the San Francisco Bay Area again.

Took some time to visit San Francisco itself one day. There was a lot of climbing the hills that make the city what it is.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Finishing off the Rocky Mountain Park set with what I call reculls. This pair was not even printed way back in the 1990s. Subjects just weren't going to make the grade as 3x5 prints and the lighting was weak enough that bigger prints would have been fairly muddy looking. Anyways after some work in PhotoShop I was able to bring these two images to life. Both were shot near the great divide.

Zoomed in on the second image and (re)discovered the elk heard. Be sure zoom into full resolution on this one

 

[bousozoku]

I stopped at a rest area along I-10 in Arizona to view the area of the Dragoon Mountains. It felt as though I could touch the sky.

 

[tizeye]

I am thinking of developing a series of these inviting bench photos, converting them over to paintings. This one I have prepped as a TIF file for import to a painting program as the first to experiment with (downsized to a jpg to upload for this posting).

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Most likely not my photo. Possible I grabbed dads camera but far more likely it was Mom who deserves the credit.

My parents built a summer cabin in the mountains north of Florrissant, CO back in the early 70s. They had a lovely view of Crystal Peak when looking out two of their windows. Mom was always urging me to get a picture of the sunset. As photo assignments go, that one was a colossal failure. However when initially working my way through their old slides I discovered this gem taken in 1976. With a bit of cropping it was exactly the photo mom was hoping I would get. The irony is that it had been hiding in her slide collection all along.

This from the original 2400ppi scan I did several years ago.

 

[Strider64]

Well for me I didn't start taking photography real seriously until I capture the following shot and I have my late father to thank for that as he spotted a Red-tailed Hawk eating a dead black squirrel that was across the street.
For me, photography became a serious pursuit only after I took the following shot, and I owe it to my late father. He was the one who noticed a Red-tailed Hawk feasting on a dead black squirrel across the street.

I've discovered that many of my best photographs were captured serendipitously, simply by being prepared and having my camera ready for immediate use.

Photography has evolved into both a passion and a career path for me.

Wildlife photography captivates me because of its tranquility and the serene contrast it offers to the hectic pace of everyday life.

 

[deep diver]

I owe it to my late father.

I found my love of photography through my father as well. He had an extraordinary eye. He's been gone for 17 years and he still inspires me.

 

[r.harris1]

I found my love of photography through my father as well. He had an extraordinary eye. He's been gone for 17 years and he still inspires me.

Likewise with my father. He was a commercial photographer and ran his own Ad agency but LOVED photography and did a lot outside of his work life. If I ever become 1% of what he was, I’ll be happy .

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I found my love of photography through my father as well. He had an extraordinary eye. He's been gone for 17 years and he still inspires me.

My love was courtesy of my mother. Her slideshows when I was a little kid sucked me in and have never released me.

OTOH Dad somehow always blew either the horizon line, the exposure or the focus. Sometimes all three.

OTOH dad did introduce me to exaggerated parallel stereo photography via aerial photographs. And with the coming of digital photography, cost and printing have been eliminated, so now I am trying to do stereo pairs whenever I have a vertical or square subject.