Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Travels in Utah and Colorado  (Read 477 times)

PeterAit

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4559
    • Peter Aitken Photographs
Travels in Utah and Colorado
« on: November 03, 2013, 11:14:08 am »

With a nod to Ansel Adams, here’s my shadow taken while wandering around southern Utah.

I have just returned from a wonderful trip through southern Utah and parts of Colorado and wanted to share some thoughts and experiences. I am not going to go into any detail about where to photograph, this area is just full of fantastic subjects ranging from 30 mile vistas to small geological details. We visited Zion, Snow Canyon, Bryce, Canyonlands, Dead Horse, Arches, Kodachrome Basin, Grand Escalante, Poudre River Canyon, Independence Pass, and many other less known and unnamed spots. Between Las Vegas and Denver we put 3000 miles on the car! It's of course impossible to do photographic justice to any of these places in a day or two (or 20!), but I sure had a ball and will post a few of the best images here as I process my 2500+ shots.

It was made clear to me early on by my wife that this was a vacation and not a photo expedition, and that if I was going to be a "photo nazi" I would be in big trouble. Thus, I needed a simple and light kit that would provide really good IQ, reasonable photographic flexibility, and quick shooting. No tripod, no 50 lb bag of lenses, no spare body. I thought about my 4/3 G3 and lenses, but decided that the edge in IQ I get with my D600 was worth the extra weight. I took 2 lenses, the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 and the Nikkor 70-200mm F/4. I must say the latter is an astounding lens! This setup worked out very well, and in fact I used the 70-200 for about 85% of my shots. If I had it to do over I would have busted the budget to get the Nikkor 24-70mm zoom to replace the Sigma, but I think I missed very few shots by having only the fixed 35mm for wide angle.

The rest of the kit consisted of only 2 batteries, charger, lens cleaning supplies, 4-32GB SD cards (enough for ~4000 raw images) and a polarizing filter. I thought I was fortunate that my two lenses take the same filter size so I would need only one polarizer, but that was a mistake. Having to switch the filter made lens changing twice as difficult and next time I will bring one for each lens.

All the gear (except the charger) fit nicely into a Kata 315 chest pack. When the 70-200 is on the body you must reverse the hood to get it in the pack, but this was a minor issue. If I had the 24-70mm instead of the 35mm it would have fit, too. The Kata is a very well designed pack that carries your gear securely during difficult hiking while distributing the weight to reduce neck and shoulder fatigue. You can have the camera out in < 5 seconds, which is not that important when photographing mountains, but if you run across Jackie Onassis and Elvis you'll be glad of the speed.
I gave up on the idea of doing any serious photo evaluation/editing on the trip and took only an old Acer netbook for backup and web access. With a small external drive this gave me two backups of all images - backups that I ended up not needing per Murphy’s law.

All in all, a fantastic trip.
Logged

thierrylegros396

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1947
Re: Travels in Utah and Colorado
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2013, 12:49:20 pm »

You look like Statue of Liberty  :D :D :D
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up