How do you plan your (photographic) trips?`

Lounge
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Okay, so being I’m in Colorado, let me help you with Colorado…

The state is basically flat in the eastern half, so plan on driving through that to get to that vertical topography you crave. It’s also a quite dry place, so subjects with water are sparse. Yep, we have rivers and they’re photogenic, but IMHO nothing like the wet places like the Smoky Mountains.

Summertime is when the most of Colorado is accessible. Winter snows are pretty, but they can keep you from getting to the really grand places. Fall colors are mostly comprised of yellow aspen, with scatterings of red from the occasional deciduous tree. That’s coming up, nominally mid-September, but you need to find and follow the fall colors predictor websites. Spring brings the puffy cumulus clouds in most places, wonderful accent to most any scenery.

I’ll recommend one train ride if you’re just going to do one, Durango & Silverton. After Rockwood, you’re in the grand verticals of the Animas River gorge, and towering stuff all the way to Silverton. I would definitely include this in a Colorado photography itinerary, even if you’re not partial to trains. Plenty of quintessential Colorado at every turn. My personal favorite, Cumbres and Toltec, has the most variety of scenery, but both terminuses are off the beaten path and the grand stuff is intermittent. Gawd, if there are C&TS folk reading this, I’m gonna catch hell… :laughing:

The greatest concentration of grandness is Rocky Mountain National Park, north of Denver. Never been there myself, but pictures bear this out. Probably crowded in the summer, and if like other national parks, you might need to book an entrance time in advance. Welcome to the Disney-ification of Colorado…

And, as with all locations, the light is the thing. Morning before-during-after sunrise and sunset light and color things in ways you just don’t get at noon.

Just to whet your appetite, here’s a ‘grab-landscape’ taken from the moving Durango & Sliverton train, from a 2016 road trip we did through Durango in my JPEG days…

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42

Wife and I went to RMNP a week before Labor Day weekend in 2021 and stayed just outside Estes Park. It was beautiful but lotsa folks as expected. We met up with another couple (former Louisiana friends who moved to MO) at the place we stayed but aside from the personal aspect of seeing them, it was kind of a logistical bust. We did a few things together, but mostly we just ended up waiting on each other a lot. Live and learn. :slight_smile:

Couple of shots from that trip:

Capulin Volcano pano, NM

Capulin Volcano vista panorama
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Sprague Lake deadfall

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Sprague Lake

Sprague Lake backdrop
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We took the train from Manitou Springs up to Pike’s Peak, but that’s a whole 'nuther kind of railroad. It was interesting and worth saying we did, but we were on the wrong side of the train so we had no real view both ways, despite paying extra to pick our seats (the website train seat map didn’t match the new cars layout… grrrr). Anyway, it was still fun regardless.

If / when we go through the area (which would for us be up I-25 I believe) we might stop in Colorado Springs this time for GotG.

I remember the drive from Estes Park to Longmont was a nice one, but again, we were destination-bound and not really able to stop and enjoy anything along the way.

Thanks for the info.

Interesting sidenote – Since posting my original message I’m now first working on planning another, relatively shorter trip (still ~2000 miles in all). My older sister lives in Arkansas and her husband passed away at the end of last March. She can’t really drive long distances because it makes her sleepy, plus another reason or two. But she’d really like to “get out” more and feels a little trapped at home in that regard. So we gave her the proposition of accompanying us on a trip to the Smoky Mountains in east Tennessee next spring. She gladly accepted, so I’m planning that trip first. But every bit of info still goes into the hopper for eventual use.

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Oh, the Smoky Mountains were what I jonsed when I was growing up in Louisiana, owing to National Geographic coverage. The Nantahala River was just gorgeous, to a 10-year-old, and the old glacier-worn mountains were a treat.

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My own planning for November has seemed to coalesce on Corsica. Have any of you fine folks been to Corsica? Most of what I know about it is from Asterix comic books…

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Not yet, but Corsica is on my list to visit. I have been to Sardinia which I understand is pretty similar geographically, and had a great time hiking. FWIW, I would just grab the Rother guide for Corsica (available in English or German).

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46

Avoid the mafia. Listen to the polyphony. :grinning:

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Do we want some sort of “travel/planning” category where people can ask about places and share places they’ve been/recommendations?

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Yes! I would certainly be interested in a travel/planning forum. I would think there is enough interest among members.

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Great idea!

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50

Depends a bit on the person like my favourite weather for hiking is pouring rain at night, it’s still terrible for photography.

51

:rofl:

During the summer I was hiking in hot weather in Hungary one day. The thing about Hungary is very difficult to be more than 5km from some form of civilization, and you almost always have mobile phone reception. So I did not bring a map, or a compass, but got offline maps on my phone.

And I also did bring enough water. It’s just that we had others in the group who didn’t, and I gave some of my water to them.

Long story short, I got insidiously dehydrated without noticing. I only noticed because my phone would not unlock (sweaty hands), and I temporarily forgot my PIN. The number I have been using for the past decade or so. It was weird. It took me about an hour to realize that my thinking is clouded because I am dehydrated, I had no other symptoms, sure I was thirsty but that was it.

Eventually we got down safe because I there were signs. When we got back to the trailhead I drank 3 liters of water with some orange juice in the village pub quickly and got back to normal.

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Picking up on a comment from another thread:

I take photos of the same type that thousands of others have taken, using the available light from the moment I was there. If I had been the first in history to take such images, one or two might make good art. But it exceedingly difficult to be original from a creative perspective.

So why bother? Because (along with family in the photos) the images form a precious reminder of what it felt like to be there at the moment.

I do try to make some creative photos in these places, but there is serious competition!

So here is an example of a very ordinary photo from my current trip to Yosemite, California. SOOC because I did not bring a computer.

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Hetch Hetchy Valley and Reservoir.

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53

Y’know, I think I sounded too defeatist in my previous post. There’s still reason to shoot the popular subjects if it documents your particular visit. My repository of digital images going back to about 2001 is my memory now, reminds me of the things we did, when.

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54

Any aversion I might have to honey pot locations isn’t about the locations nor prior images – it’s about the inability to photograph it in private when there are gazillions of I-grammers taking selfies in front of it.

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I sometimes go out at night, in rain, or deep cold, just to have some privacy and solitude.

“Bad weather” also looks great on camera (sometimes).

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I like that image as is (sooc jpg)!

wrt to Herzog:

I think Herzog would not direct his comment at the types of photographs you reference. I think he is really aiming his sharp tongue at people who are trying very hard to make “serious” work (gallery world stuff).

Also, the way I read him, his comment was more along the lines of how AI generated films, images, scripts,etc can’t be good because they are inherently a statistically median product (ala a few of Mica’s comments). Not to disparage anyone’s work, but I think it is uncontroversial to say some people recreate someone else’s style/work merely because it is successful in the market. I think that is the ‘ad nauseam’ he thinks should just be offloaded to AI.

But I maybe I am making him out to be a nicer/ more thoughtful person than he is irl :laughing:

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That’s why I love walking in pouring rain at night there’s absolutely no one especially in forests

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Two of our best days in Japan were in the pouring (or at least steady) rain. Ryoan-ji temple and Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto have breath-takingly beautiful gardens and surrounding landscape. Both are big tourist attractions, but were actually very quiet on the days we went, probably due to the rain. We got soaking wet, but did not care. The atmosphere of such Zen Buddhist temples is greatly enhanced by the rain in fact.

I am hoping for a very rainy winter here in SoCal (but hopefully no flooding or landslides!)–huge El Nino on tap!

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Try going to some of the major museums in Europe–esp. the Musée D’Orsay. Hordes of people taking selfies and group shots in front of BIG FAMOUS PAINTING with their backs to it the entire time.

EDIT: I don’t mean to pick on Europe per se, because we see this everywhere. The Musée D’Orsay, however, was the most egregious example we have seen. In addition to the painting posers, one young woman had hired a professional photographer who followed her around the museum while she was striking innumerable poses in front of everything, including the famous clock we just wanted to see! Can’t imagine why they allow that sort of thing. Other museums that prohibit photography, e.g., the Museo del Prado in Madrid, have no such annoyances.

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Exactly. Which is what I was trying to say also, I believe.

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