Mountain Bike Infinity, a photo from Colorado, West

Photographer's Note

Two mountain bike riders on Moffat Road in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I can only imagine someone gave them a lift into the mountains in their 4 wheel drive!!

This photo is taken is near the top of the great divide, looking south towards Rollins Pass. This place is approximately 11,000 feet above sea level, so the air is quite thin. The lake in the picture is Yankee Doodle Lake (10,711 feet).

I have taken this literally standing on the "timberline". Behind me no trees will grow because of the altitude. Below, in front of me, there is obviously a lot of forestation. A special place!

I've put Boulder as the city nearest this place - it's actually about 2.5 hours away along extremely winding and rough roads!

Despite the remoteness, there were quite a few people up there. Everyone had stopped because a little further along the road was totally blocked by a huge snow drift (the view in this photo is of the sunny, southern side of a line of mountain ridges).

An interesting observation on Americans - the higher up in altitude you go, the friendlier they seem to get. Everyone was positively "chummy" up here!

Although this was taken in the middle of summer, and the weather was beautiful and sunny, only 10 minutes before I took this photo their was quite a strong hail storm! Must be the odd effects of the altitude.

Unlike most of my photos posted so far, although I took this on Print film I had it developed by a lab in Denver who used Kodak's Photo Imaging system and scanned the image to CD for me. Excellent results with huge file size.

joergen115, hispic, phi729, nwoehnl, GrahamB, technogran, ChrisJ ha puntuado esta nota como útil.

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joergen115 (2246) 2004-07-25 5:42 [Comment]

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taivo (1843) 2004-07-25 6:01

What a great landscape. I like the dense vegetation stretching beyond the horizon. The dusty path that disappears into the forest is a nice catch too.

phi729 (2101) 2004-07-25 10:28

Hello Paul,
Indeed, a special place with these extents of forests as far as the eye can see. The colors are beautiful (prairies, sky, firs).
Your notes are rich and make want to be going to make a little outdoor. I also like your observation on Americans ;-) French are similar, and as soon as they find again their big cars, home,... they lose all this modesty and kindness.

I have make a WS to try to improve the sharpness of the photo.

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RegisMinot (1543) 2004-07-25 12:46

Great panorama which provides an invitation to join the two bikers, with a camera round the neck, of course. Your remark is quite applicable to other countries. I do often walks in the Alps and along the paths, all people are much more friendly than in towns or on see borders for instance.

nwoehnl (122) 2004-07-25 16:33

Very impressive view of the vast landscape, Paul, with beautiful colors. The two bikers going along the pathway, and the small pond are nice attention-drawing elements in this composition, which has a good depth towards the mountain ranges on the horizon. Well done.

I had to smile reading your note, because based on my extensive traveling in the U.S. and Canada you found a nice wording for one of the major differences to Central Europe in terms of the concept of space and distance: I put Boulder as the nearest city - it's actually 2.5 hours away .... Across most parts of Central Europe you are going to have a tough time going longer than 30 minutes without hitting a sign of civilization. Also, the "positively chummy" comment seems to resonate based on what I experienced on my hikes in the Colorado and Canadian Rockies.

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GrahamB (939) 2004-07-26 6:05

Great shot. I like the composition with the layers of hills and the track leading in from the bottom corner. The bit of foreground adds depth to the scene. Very well captured.

technogran (1339) 2004-07-26 15:48

Great mountain shot. I like the way the dusty looking road goes across the composition at an angle and the little lake presents a spot of colour amonst all the greenery. Nice one.

ChrisJ (171146) 2004-07-29 8:27

Great landscape but you still need to sharpen once with a post processing program like Adobe PhotoShop. Good colour saturation.

erthmuffin (1551) 2004-08-16 19:04

very nice colors and composition, although i find the color of the pond distracting. i like the road running diagonally.

i don't think it's that people get friendlier as the altitude increases, i think they are friendly based on the amount of effort it took to get there. they are the people that really want to be out there, and appreciate that you are out there, too, enjoying the beauty. (I base this on encounters in Arizona, where you go down into canyons instead of up mountains, people here get friendly as the altitude decreases...)

cheers.

Algarvio (285) 2004-09-27 16:47 [Comment]