Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 46mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
Just over a week ago a clickbait video appeared on my YouTube feed touting a “Hidden Gem Near Denver!” That hidden gem is Paint Mines Interpretive Park, a county park in El Paso County, Colorado. If online sources are to be believed, the park is almost 25 years old, but the park seems new and well-maintained. It has nice parking lots, smooth and wide walking paths, and nice split-rail fences around the drop-offs; my suspicion is that it took the county a while to get around to developing the park once they acquired the land. Regardless, they have done a nice job. Kudos to El Paso County.
The park is out on the plains northeast of Colorado Springs, pretty much in the middle of proverbial nowhere. This is one of the roads my wife and I drove to reach it:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 24mm, 1/250 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500. Three-image panorama.
In case you are wondering, County Roads 98, 102, 106, and 81 are similar.
While the trails do also meander across the flat grassland, the headline feature for the park is the small area of colorful badlands with interesting hoodoos and maze-like mini-canyons carved by water over the ages. While this location certainly doesn’t have the sheer scale of somewhere like Bryce Canyon National Park, it is still interesting to explore and you will have it pretty much to yourself:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 61mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
Actually, it’s not quite as lonely as I would like: my record swat was three mosquitos at once and I finished the visit with about two dozen bites. Consequently, I did not even take the time to switch lenses; instead, I worked quickly and ran from hoodoo to hoodoo in a serpentine manner. This location demands a return visit—with bug spray—and some diligent tripod work: low angles, focus-stacking, tilt-shifts, and fisheyes.
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 96mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
While most of the formations are a chalky white, there are also plenty of yellows and oranges and pinks (oh my!):
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 115mm, 1/60 sec, f/11, ISO 500.
While you are (rightly) not allowed to climb on the formations, you are allowed to wander amongst them in many places. There are, obviously, limitless compositions in a place like this:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 31.5mm, 1/125 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
Our visit was late in the day and there were storms all around, but it did not rain on us even though we expected it. Eventually a little light poked through the dark skies, which added some nice drama:
Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S at 24mm, 1/250 sec, f/9.5, ISO 500.
On my next return, I would like to arrive early in the morning in hopes of getting some light on different formations, especially some pink ones that were largely in shadow late in the day. It would also give me a chance to visit some areas that I didn’t get to this time.
I also think it would be an interesting place with fresh snow, so perhaps a winter excursion is in order. (No bug spray required!)
By the way, I put another roadside picture from this trip at the top of my home page. I have some plans for rotating the image that is featured there and moving past features to a gallery. This is a first step to that end.
4 responses to “Paint Mine Proboscides”
Amazing rock formations!
They were indeed! I am looking forward to a return visit. I have been advised by a friend that I can visit in April for a sans mosquito experience!
I can only admire you for persisting at all in response to being bitten so often!
I like Fallen especially because it has such a clear principal area of interest: the huge, rounded boulder. Does photographing these formations hold a challenge not unlike making images in forests – making sense out of fairly random configurations? Spelunkable also has a clear path for the eye to follow.
Thank you for prompting me to look up hoodoo. I now understand why some are ‘Aspiring’!
Thank you, Rob! I like Fallen for the same reason you mentioned—certainly not a subtle composition, but I do like that after you look at that prominent boulder in the foreground that you can follow the crack further back until it disappears.
I had not thought about comparing it to the challenge of finding compositions in forests, but I think you are right. Much like a forest, soft light makes it easier by removing one opponent—harsh light—from the fight. Part of me wants to say that this is more difficult, though, because in (many) forests there are a lot of trees doing the same thing so they make a pattern you can exploit in various ways. With these, I found it a little harder to show a pattern. It’s the usual problem, where if you go wide enough to show the pattern you are showing a lot of things that you don’t want, and if you go narrower you aren’t showing the pattern for context. In some ways the sheer scale of someplace like Bryce Canyon is a little more forgiving because it is so huge. This location is a lot smaller in scope.
That said, it’s probably a question of practice. When we first got to the almond orchards in Andalucía, I felt very similar: going wide failed for one reason and going narrow failed for another. But after a while, it got better.
Of course, I wasn’t chased away by mosquitos, was I?