©2009 Ed Book

how I made this image - long exposure (1/2 sec) and moved the camera up and down.  I processed the image only with adjustmens to white and black point, clarity (mid-tone contrast), overall contrast, brightness.  I had to make a lot of exposures checking results immediately ("chimping") and then trying again and again till the camera dance and my eye were getting into sync...  The RAW image looks a drab grayish blur but from experience I knew what I could expect from my normal range of adjustments. 

On my last visit to this area I was impressed by the size of the aspen clones (grove of trees connected together by their roots) and wanted to visit just for photographing these trees.  Although they are at the base of one of the most spectacular mountain fronts in the Rockies, the aspen groves are worth visiting even when the mountains are in the clouds.  The approach to the National Forest passes through some private lands and by the 'no tresspassing' signs posted along the roads it appears that the roads themselves are private.  But no, they are legal accesses to the National Forest - since my last trip the number of new excessive consumption ranch homes (probably second or third or forth homes)  and fences added is noticable.  (an indication of the widening gap between the excessively rich and the rest of us).  

I made this image along one of those roads that goes to a trailhead into the widerness.  On this occasion, like on so many others, at the indication that the road was narrowing and getting rougher, I should have parked at a wide spot and walked but I thought I'd go a little farther to find a better turn-around place... 'turned out that I had to drive through a dip where the topography of the dip was more acute than the length of the van's wheelbase length... I caught the trailer hitch on a big rock and was stopped from going ahead or backward... After climbing out and scoping out my predictament I decided to give a run at going backward and bounced over the rock and the hitch dug a deep furrow in the roadway (actually in the dry stream bed I was crossing - I had measured and remeasured clearances between the rock and everything hanging down underneith the van to assure that if I shifted to the right a couple and no more than four inches, I'd be safe... I often have these little adventures... ones that my high-clearance four-wheel drive van left at home would not even notice... (the problem with the four-wheel drive van is that it beats one to exhaustion when driving down a freeway although cruises nicely on the roughest back roads... agressive tires, stiff suspension, and short wheelbase contribute to the rough ride...)  Sometime, I'll tell about the mushrooms that I found growing in the rug and on the steering wheel leather cover when I returned from a very long trip and found that a housesitter who didn't have my permission to use the van lent it to someone to help them move and when they returned it, didn't close the sliding door... in the rainy Pacific NW winter... It took the whole next summer to dry out.  The van is for sale now (minus growy things - except some moss on the roof) in case you know someone looking for a very capable 'get there' vehicle or trailer puller...

Peace