Staying Down Low

It's been a crazy summer and it's hard to believe that Fall is just around the corner. My camera, a Sony A550 gave up the ghost while on a photoshoot outside of Breckenridge. The circuitry went adios and it is now sitting at the Sony repair headquarters in TX waiting to be fixed. Shortly before that happened, just weeks, I got incredibly ill with a very serious skin infection which lead me to being hospitalized for almost a week. I was in a bad, bad world I tell ya. Needless to say I have an incredible amount of medical bills  which I need to pay and my camera being repaired? Well...I wasn't sure what i was going to do. I decided to try and drum up print sales through my site on deviantART  and it's actually been going pretty good. I also have a nice enough friend who let me borrow his brand new, basically still in the box, Sony a65 for a few weeks that I could shoot and try to make some cash with my images. I owe him let me tell you!

Anyways, this year I have stayed down low. Most photographers when they visit Colorado, or are from here, tend to go to the mountains but I did this rather intentionally. I wanted to be able to focus on Colorado locally and concentrate on my state, county and city parks and wilderness areas. I have found many new areas to photograph, met some wonderful fellow photographers who I now call friends and have seen some great wildlife.

Wildlife though was another reason. I wanted to better myself as photographing animals. I spent a lot of time watching, observing, learning and being patient. Not taking a million photos but just a few. I intentionally limited myself to try and get the shot that I wanted right away. Some times I was successful, sometimes not. However, I taught myself and I learned a great deal. It's proved a very valuable lesson.

I guess in 6 weeks time we'll see how much I learned when I head up to Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph the annual Elk rut. I'm excited and I think this year I will see things like I never have before with putting what I learned to maximum use.

Onwards and upwards!
---John

A white-tailed deer fawn as seen in the grassland of Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife refuge in Colorado. 

The landscape of Red Rocks Park shows off it's prehistoric beauty as the soft light dances across the land and the colors of sunrise paint the sky a brilliant shade of pink and blue

A Red-tailed hawk keeps a watch out against a blue sky in Colorado. Such stunning birds with an incredible magnificence about them.