Isolated

I found this house half a mile down Trout Lake Road. Trout Lake road is not a paved one, but a dir one, and the snow had been removed from it but was a little muddy. It was not the prettiest way to get to this spot, but the views were incredible. To edit this picture, I wanted to highlight the singular house. I did so by decreasing the saturation of the entire image, then increasing the saturation of just the reds, which is the color of the house. This made the picture seem dull while the house looks vibrant. 

 

Alpine Peaks

For this final drone picture from Trout Lake, I found a little gap between two peaks that allowed me to see for miles. In the foreground of the picture, you can see the road snaking through the image. But the further you look back, the more it disappears and the more the mountains appear. I would like to say that I intentionally kept the focus very crisp on the mountains in the background, but I am not advanced enough to know how to do so. 

 

Open

From 1,600 feet up, the valley floor turned into a vast emptiness. There are very few markings (besides the obvious road in the middle) and the only contrast in the picture between the black trees and white snow. The trees have no real structure as they just look like black points. Then you look back at the very crisp mountain and the wispy clouds. Once again, there was a slight blue hue to the image, but a quick edit in Photoshop cleared most of it up. 

 

Road to the Mountains

After turning the camera to face south, I found this road snaking through the valley floor. It is appropriately named Trout Lake Road, who would have thought. The lake was also where I saw some film being shot. As we were driving away, I noticed some 'crew' signs on the side of the road. Then, as we drove further west on CO-145, I saw a large gathering of people and some cameras. I am not sure what they were filming, but I guess this frozen lake in the middle of Colorado was the perfect spot. 

 

Trout Lake

For my next adventure, I turned to Google Maps. I found a lake nearby CO-145, dropped a pin so I would have directions even out of cellular coverage, and went. It was strange how a drive of only eleven miles revealed an entirely different landscape. It wasn't like a transition from winter to summer, but the views were all new. For this picture, I noticed this house positioned below the untouched landscape and mountain peaks. I wanted to capture this with an isolated feeling, and I did so by going high into the sky and photographing as much of the view as I could. 

 

Rays of Sun

As the sun continued to set, I turned around and faced the town. This picture ended up being the last one I took for the night. Not because the battery was running low or it was too cold, but because I took a video of the sun setting. Of the many picture and video options on the drone, one of them is hyperlapse. What this mode does is it takes many pictures (this specific one was 250) and compiles them together. Think of it like a timelapse feature, just from a drone. Hopefully, I will have posted the video by the time this post comes out, and you all can see the mountains turning from orange back to white. 

 

Bald Mountain

As we continue to plow through the series (day 20 of 45), I was reminded of a recent picture. The sky above Bald Mountain reminds me of the sky above Seaside from the Florida series. The baby blues, greens, and oranges all forming this gradual transition from color to color. Then you look down at the mountain and notice the ski runs twisting and turning all over the mountain. And to top everything off, there is the hint of orange on a singular western-facing slope. I don't think I have seen a better image of Bald Mountain. 

 

Shadows

This next picture is a simple camera rotation from yesterday's one. There was something about these mountains that was calling me to post them. Maybe it was the orange sun that hit only the western-facing slopes or the completely untouched snow and exposed rocks, but whatever it is, it is magnificent. Also, at the bottom of the picture is Mill Creek Road. This is just one of many hiking and offroading trails that are around Telluride. Right now, they are just lines in the mountain, but once summer hits, they are frequently visited and is definitely something I want to do in the future.

 

Mountain Top Sunset

After picking up some food from Telluride, I noticed the sky turning into some wonderful colors. Out of all of my skiing trips, this is the very first one where I was able to capture a colorful sunrise or sunset. For some reason, the sun has never cooperated while I have been in Colorado in the winter. But for this night, it did. The lower sky turned a bright orange, the upper sky a dark blue, and the clouds a vibrant yellow. I am not sure what more I could have asked for. 

Telluride

As I began the long flight to the parking lot, I stopped for a second to appreciate the view looking west. The tiny town of Telluride is situated in the valley of multiple 14,000-foot behemoths. Luckily, it had just snowed, and these mountains were a wonderful shade of white. For some reason, there was a slight issue with the white balance of the camera, as all the pictures (especially this one) turned out slightly blue. I am not sure whether that is just a side effect of shooting a white object or if it happens to all drones, but some minor corrections in Photoshop fixed most of the mistakes. 

Bridal Veil Falls

This is Bridal Veil Falls, if the title didn't give it away. It is a 365-foot tall waterfall accompanied by the Bridal Veil Falls hydroelectric powerplant at the top of it. The distance to the falls was much further than I originally planned. I simply put in a fresh battery (thankfully) and started flying towards the falls. And 5,460 feet later, I reached this point. I was a little nervous sending it all this way but was very satisfied with the performance; a perfect 5/5 signal from a mile away, very long battery life (30+ minutes), and zero close calls. I'd call it a successful day!

 

San Juan Mountains

Next on the adventure was a trip to Pandora, Colorado. You may recall my description of Pandora from an earlier explanation, but I have since learned that it was an abandoned mining town. On its east side is Trico Peak, the peak in the middle of this picture. The parking lot for this view is a decent way back from the actual mountain and falls, far enough to get a view of the whole scene but too far to see any details. But that sounds like the perfect job for the drone! This first picture comes from very far away, but tomorrow I venture closer to the falls.

 

Home

The next day the clouds broke and left behind snow-covered everything. This meant drone flying weather! While looking around from about 400 feet, I noticed this house. It was further down the road from some other ones, making it the perfect subject for this picture. I positioned myself so that the house would be centered and that you can see just enough of the road to get the essence that it was there without it being too intrusive. When editing, a simple contrast increase and a hint of saturation were all that was needed to create this masterpiece. 

 

Hanging On

As I kept walking around, I found this icicle hanging onto a pine tree. It is nothing special, but I thought it looked interesting, so I took a picture of it. More specifically, I took many pictures of it. I was trying to capture the snow falling around it. I was able to catch a few snowflakes, but nothing like what I was imagining. But the sharp focus and bright colors make up for the loss of snowflakes, so it turned out to be a pretty good picture. 

 

The Lift

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Wednesday brought snow clouds. Snow clouds mean no droning (a new verb I created for myself!). Instead, I walked around with my camera, the old-fashioned way. What interested me about this lift was its straightness. The further you look back, the more faded the picture becomes. It almost disappears, leaving me to wonder what's back there, but it's just more snow and the lift. 

 

Black Bear Pass

We have moved! Continuing our adventure, we traveled through the town of Telluride and into the town of Pandora. I'm not sure if it is entirely a town or if it's just a location on Google Maps, but I'll call it a town. Either way, in Pandora, on the east side of Telluride, there is a pass, Black Bear Pass. It connects the towns of Ouray and Telluride. It's a little hard to see from this image, but the cut bits on the mountainside are the lower parts of the pass. It cuts the mileage from 49.5 miles and an hour to 8.5 miles and about four hours. It requires a high clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle and is only one way and a car length wide in some parts, but with the right driver, it is passable and very, very beautiful. 

 

Sunkist

The sun was very much not cooperating with me. Not at all. Granted, I should have probably expected this to happen. Shooting towards the west while the sun is setting is not the best idea, but come on, if those clouds could have shifted up just a little. Maybe next time. I ended up embracing the challenge by taking many different images with varying exposures trying to find the perfect one. I chose the one that made the sun not too overexposed and the mountainside darker but not too dark so that it wasn't uneditable. And with the magic of editing, it all comes together like this. 

 

Divided

The way these trees look from a bird's eye view is magical. They aren't perfectly straight like I imagined. They look slanted and diagonal from up above, which is because they aren't in the exact center of the picture. With the road, it was hard to find a completely straight portion of it. It kept winding left and right, and around and over the mountains. I decided that the road didn't have to slice the image perfectly. If anything, that would make it look less interesting. So, I centered the road as best I could, then took the picture. 

 

Open

At the same scenic overlook, I flew over about 1,200 feet to the north. I was met with this hill that blocked the view of the town. At first, I was upset. I wanted to capture the town and all its city life from a faraway distance. But then I realized that having only nature in the image also works. Besides the highway, much of the land is entirely untouched. It's nice to see this land left to survive how it was meant to be. 

 

Freedom

After changing the camera angle, I found this view looking directly down. Throughout this series, there will be many of these 90-degree camera angles (looking straight down). But, each one appears a little different and tells a different story. This story is one of a hidden view that many don't notice. A lot of the time on the road, especially when we need to get to a destination fast, we don't stop at all the scenic overlooks. We just focus on the road ahead. For this picture, I wanted to capture the overlook and all the excellence that is around it. Maybe we should pay more attention to those signs like we do speed limit signs, or should I say, some of us pay attention to speed limit signs.