my travels in pixels

Grand Teton NP, WY Working our way north took us to the Grand Teton national park. Even though we’ve been there four times there are places we haven’t photographed. Now that Lindsay is starting to take landscape pictures, he wanted to try the Mormon Row barn at sunrise. There had been forest fires in the north for a few weeks now and the day we arrived the smoke was quite strong and was covering up the mountains so I wasn’t very optimistic that we would get good pictures. While we didn’t really need to be there long before sunrise, you do need to get a spot as it’s very popular. And whoever gets there first sets the line that you can photograph from. So if someone is using a very wide angle lens, they are going to be further back than I would want to be. Going up the back road is full of pot holes and can be really messy if it's been raining but it's significantly shorter than going by the sealed road. Arriving just before sunrise was a bit slack but we did manage to get a go...

We loved photographing the mustangs in Cody, so when Charlene invited us to her neck of the woods to the west of Salt Lake City to photograph the wild mustangs there we jumped at the chance. She showed us of a campsite up in the canyon not far out of Tooele which I still can't pronounce - there's a w in there somewhere! Even though it was quite warm, our campsite was under trees and lovely and cool. Charlene played local guide on our first day taking us way out into the desert for about 90 minutes to her secret place. Sometime during the day the horses normally make their way to a couple of water holes. We checked both but there weren't any horses to be seen. At the second one we could see a huge herd off in the distance. Unfortunately there were some people on trail buggies and the horses bolted and ran further off into the distance. The horses associate the trail buggies with the rangers who come out to sterilise them, so they don't stick around. After a ...

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado The best thing about a National Parks pass is that you can bypass the queues going past the entrance kiosks as you can swipe the card reader to open the boom gate up, which came in very handy during the peak times such as the weekend. The queues going into the national park were very long and we just sailed passed them all. We can't fit in the campsites in the National Park as we are too big and unfortunately we couldn't get a booking in the county campground that we had been to before as it was booked out, so had to go to a commercial one. We spent most of our time down at Sprague Lake inside the RMNP photographing the moose, trying a sunrise picture of the lake and mountains and finally a Milky Way shoot but there was too much light pollution and the pictures just came out red. At one time Lindsay had gone walking off in the dark to talk to another photographer leaving me alone in the dark. I could hear noises was it a bear, co...

Mt Evans, CO The road to Mt Evans is only open for a short period each year and the last time we passed it was closed so we were determined to make it this time. It’s the highest road in America, but we weren’t going up there for the views like most people – we wanted to see mountain goats up close. There are usually around 20 near the summit. On day one: we saw nothing. On day two: we saw a mother with her two kids born this year and a yearling from last year. Four is better than none. We spent quite a while with them and felt really happy. It is said they usually roam between milepost 11 and 14 and sometimes at the summit. I don’t remember any grass at the summit, so am not sure why they would be up there. On our third day it had snowed overnight and there was a light sprinkling everywhere, it was 32°F/0°C at the top and no goats that we could see so we at least we didn’t have to stand out in the cold to take photos of them. The drive up and down didn’t get any eas...

We have been to Canyonlands before and stayed at Horsethielf campground as it's the only one near the park that we can fit our trailer in. Lindsay hadn’t photographed Mesa Arch and he really wanted to, so this was an absolute must stop on this trip. Yes, I know it’s landscape, even men can change their minds - it's the challenge of getting a good sunrise, hopefully with the sun peeping through and the rock being lit up. Mesa Arch which you need to get to an hour or so before sunrise to get a spot as it's a very popular site. We tried a sunset at Green River but were disappointed again as the clouds covered what would have been a nice sunset. We were rewarded with a double rainbow though.We have been to Green River twice now and both times there have been storms. Three 4am early starts for sunrises wears you down. I went twice to Mesa Arch and the third time I went to Dead Horse Point in the state park right next to Canyonlands. Lindsay dropped m...

The next few posts are from our trip last year that I never got around to finishing. We have come back to North America to do one last trip in our 5th wheel. Lindsay really wanted to get some more bear pictures so the whole trip has been planned around going to Bella Coola and Likely in BC, Canada. Antelope Canyon, AZ I photographed Antelope Canyon in 2012 but wasn’t completely happy with my photos, so seeing as we would be in Page Arizona again to go to Horseshoe Bend Lindsay asked me if I wanted to try again. The only way into the canyons is to do a tour, but I didn't want to just do the normal tourist tour as there are too many people in the way and you can't use a tripod, so the only option is to do a photographic tour. Taking good photos inside the canyon without a tripod is difficult, I did that last time as I had trouble with my tripod and cast it aside. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. When I first started looking for a vacancy three months ago,...