Colorado Rockies

Doing some folder clean-up and came across a few shots from last year's trip to the Colorado Rockies. Thought I'd put some up for view...

Just after sunrise, outside of Leadville, CO:





From inside Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park, early morning just before a storm:

Both images are good but #2 is really striking. It has great comp and grabs and holds my attention. The Rockies can provide a lot of opportunities for great photographs.

Hi John,

You have made a distinct color palette. What are you doing aand what are the ideas behind it. I feel that I'd like to know enough to explain this as if I was a curator in a gallery explaining your art!

Asher

Hi Steve,
Thank you kindly for the compliment. I think the second image works well due to the sense (or lack of being able to judge) of magnitude. You just cannot get your head around how far into the distance your eye is actually seeing. The peaks in the distance all exceed 10,000'.
I also shot this image with the erie knowlege of being the only visitor in the park that morning ( I had been chatting it up with the park ranger at the entrance a few minutes earlier).

Hi Asher,
I wish I could give you a telling or succinct explanation, but at risk to disappoint you I must admit mostly... "well, they just came out that way".
For much of my early spring trip the weather was quite uncooperative - generally heavy overcast with intermittent snow. My eyes saw much more than I knew my camera (or my expertise) could ever capture. Consequently I shot most of my images bracketed up to +/- 5 stops. The hope was to pull something usable out at a later date using Photomatix's HDR software. The results you see here are some of that. I'm not a big fan of the overly processed HDR shots you see posted around elsewhere and the artificial "cartoon" effect doesn't hold my attention. I think these images are on the hairy edge of that. The saturation is high for the color range available (the foreground grasses) and almost desaturated in the distant views due to the inclement weather.