[Leica] Garden of The Gods

["4Season" <4Season@boulder.net>]

This Sunday, I hopped into a borrowed Tercel and drove about 100 miles to
Colorado Springs. The drive down I-25 was mostly forgettable, but the
stretch from Castle Rock to Colorado Springs, with it's rolling fields of
grass, brilliant green with new growth, lit by an early morning sun mixed
with dark clouds, made it hard to keep one's eyes on the road! That you're
supposed to whip through it at 75 miles an hour seems criminal!

The entrance to The Garden of The Gods is magnificent: Giant red rock
formations frame distant Pike's Peak, still dazzlingly bright with snow.
When I arrived, a ground fog was lifting, the rocks and the peak were
practically glowing! I made a number of photos from the parking lot of the
visitor's center (windy and COLD!) using the M6 on a tripod, along with the
50/2.8 Elmar-M.

It was my first visit to the park, and I missed the main parking area, but
figured I'd catch it on the return. This proved fortunate: Driving near the
far end of the park, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a wonderful scene of
trees in spring color, backlight by the morning sun. I was so wrapped up in
framing this composition that I almost missed the fact that 4 deer were
standing nearby. The camera was on the tripod and the shutter speed was way
too low for handholding, so using light tension on the Arca B1 ballhead, I
composed on the fly, hoping all the while that they'd stand still enough for
1/15th of a second! My technique has evolved into one of "shoot now, twiddle
with settings if you have enough time for additional shots".  I might've
opened the lens wide, bumped the shutter speed to 1/250, switched to the
90mm lens and had a fantastic photo of a field of new grass! No time to do
anything but compose the best "environmental portrait"-type photo of animals
in their habitat and bracket best I could, with the 50 Elmar that was
mounted, and pray. You guessed it, I only got in a few shots before I ran
out of film! Why does no one make 72-exposure rolls anymore??

The sun was, by this time, rising pretty well in the sky, and, since I was
near a trailhead, I left the car parked on the far end of the park and went
for a walk towards the central "Garden".  The particular trail I took was
pretty badly crisscrossed with gullies, but it's not too hard to find one's
way when on a path shared with horses ;-) After an easy hike, I arrived at
the red rock formation known as the Siamese Twins. Didn't quite know what to
make of it at first, but hit upon the idea of getting in as close as
possible with the 35mm Summicron, and minimizing distractions from the rocks
themselves. I thus eliminated trees and clouds from the shot. Furthermore, I
wanted to convey the sense of how brightly colored the rocks were, and how
rich and blue the sky was, using black and white film. My light meter was
telling me that the shot just wasn't happening; that the sky was still
around 1-1/2 stops brighter than the highlights on the rocks. Blech. But
wait--red rocks--red filter! To my chagrin, my meter now told me that the
rocks and sky as seen through the red filter were now of equal
brightness--even worse! Finally, I tried stacking the red and a polarizer,
and wouldn't you know it--my skies were now about 1-1/2 stops deeper than
the rocks, which sounded just fine to me, so I burned up a lot of film on
the spot.

By the time I reached the central "Garden", the sun was high overhead, so I
mostly played tourist and puzzled out how I'd photograph the really mammoth
freestanding rock formations that I was seeing; certainly most were beyond
the reach of a 35mm lens. Step too far back and the drama and sense of scale
are lost. Get in too close, and who can tell what the object is? Dunno, I'll
have to come back, and for the heck of it, maybe I'll see what I can do
using a 90, which is about the last thing you'd expect to use in the place!

All in all, not a bad way to spend the day; I'll return with a more
leisurely schedule. I still must visit the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde, and
ride the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge railroad--I've never seen a steam
locomotive in operation, and feel I must correct that sad state of affairs!

Jeff