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Driving from Estes Park along the Trail Ridge Road through the Rocky Mountain National Park, Liz and I just had to stop at this pull over to admire the view of the sunlit mountain peaks to the south.
We were on our way to see Grand Lake, about an hour's drive away, and we were taking it easy, dawdling along while rubbernecking at the fantastic scenery.
What made this particular scene come alive for me, photographically speaking, was the collection of rounded boulders just off the side of the road, which I reckoned would make a great foreground for an image, rather than just photograph the mountains in the distance.
So many times in landscape photography a strong foreground can really make a composition come alive, adding a three dimensionality that draws the viewer into the frame.
Having found my foreground and background I then went a bit further and decided to add the branch of a pine tree to the top of the image space to act as a frame, focusing attention on the mountains in the distance by stopping the eye wandering up and out of the picture.
I'm glad we weren't in a hurry, as I spent quite a few minutes shuffling the camera and tripod a few inches this way and that way till my composition was a strong as I could make it.
Liz sat patiently in the car, knitting away while I was engrossed outside.
Filename - rocky mountains 08.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/13 sec @ f16, ISO100
Location - Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Polarising filter used to enhance colours
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