The Artful Engineer

I didn’t have enough time in Leadville, Colorado, to thoroughly explore the area (as if you can ever thoroughly explore an area in the Rocky Mountains), but I would say that it does not have the massive stands of aspen trees that you find near, for example, Kebler Pass, 50 miles to the southwest, an area I photographed in 2013 and 2016. (A flashback post is likely in order!) Regardless, there are plenty of aspens and they provide the primary inventory of fall color in the area. There are also plenty of structures dating back to Leadville’s mining days since gold was initially discovered in 1860. Leadville, the highest incorporated city in North America at 10,119 feet (3,084 m) elevation, is just under a full mile higher than Denver, the “Mile High City” and has a colorful mining history full of colorful characters.

This little shack below clearly has seen better days, but was in a pretty little grove of aspens. There was enough junk around that it looked like someone had a small mine on the site, so I was careful as I explored. Even if your tetanus shots are up to date, you definitely shouldn’t step on any boards in an area like this because you never know if someone just tossed a few now-rotten ones across the top of a shaft a hundred years ago and moved on. While the state has a group that seals hundreds of old abandoned mine entrances every year, they have a large backlog. Sometimes, tragic things happen to the unsuspecting. So, not knowing what was where, I did not tramp through the foreground area of this image:

This next image was taken alongside a road. Since the ground sloped steeply down, I could look straight into the middle of these young trees. Using the widest aperture on this lens (which is admittedly not very wide at f/4) the background trees are lightly blurred. I think this helps separate the image into four distinct layers: sharp foreground leaves, blurry trunks, blurry background yellow leaves, and distant blurry evergreens.

At the opposite extreme of sharpness, these next two images are both focus stacks from very close range. This zoom focuses quite close with a maximum reproduction ratio of 0.39, at which point something 3.5 inches across will fill the entire width of the frame. In my mind, this puts its capabilities somewhere between casual closeup and serious macro; it is good enough that as much as I want a 105mm macro lens, I haven’t taken that bait.

The previous image and the next image were only taken a few feet apart but have very different color palettes that complement each other nicely. It would be easy to spend the whole day with a tripod working in a ten-foot circle when you are taking such tight images. As much as I like having them, I tend to lose interest after taking more than a few of these. They can be striking, though, and also are a nice way to mix up the scale in a set of images, so I really should try to get a few on every outing.

Setting aside aspens and fall color, I first spied this tired structure on the long drive discussed last week, but as it was only ten minutes into a four-hour (one-way) drive, I chose not to stop. When I returned the next day, I was rewarded with great light and dramatic skies:

Next week I will feature some mining structures from the Leadville area; those are always fun to find and are good raw material for interesting images. Thank you for tagging along on my journeys!