First of all I want to say thank you to all the participants in the 2011 Crested Butte Workshop. I had a wonderful time reuniting with old friends and meeting new ones in the beautiful mountains surrounding Crested Butte. Everyone was very helpful and encouraging, and I think almost everyone learned as much from the other participants as they did from me. As each photographer discovered a new technique or beautiful scene, they would share it with the other photographers and encourage them to create beautiful images as well. I think everyone came home with images they will be proud to show their friends and family. As is usually the case, I wish we could have had more time to explore, photograph, review images and learn together. I'm looking forward to doing this again next year...
I rarely take the time to photograph for myself during the workshops, and the few images I do take during the course of the workshop are usually "documentary" images of the participants in the field. Here are a few of those images:
Veronika Gaia on upper Brush Creek Road
(Veronika created a stunning image of this scene, composing so that the tall sunflowers in the middle of this image were on the right hand side and very prominent in the frame, with the middle and background filled with a sea of color.)
Tom Parish on Gothic Road
(This patch of wildflowers along Gothic Road provided a great opportunity to isolate a single sunflower in a wash of blue and yellow bokeh, as well as the opportunity to create a "grand scenic" with the spectacular mountain ridge in the background.)
Annie Odoy on upper Brush Creek Road
(Annie created a stunning "grand scenic" from this location, with the valley in the middle distance (off the left side of the frame) used to draw the viewer deep into the scene and to the next range of mountains in the distance.)
Sue and Rick Pepin on Brush Creek Road
(This location provided a great learning experience, and I think many of us found that our most creative images were the ones where we isolated the subject instead of trying to capture it all in one frame.)
Rick Pepin on upper Brush Creek Road
(Rick lost his glasses in this field, right beside the yellow flower... Still, someone was looking over us during this workshop. We all joined in the search and it wasn't long until we found Rick's glasses.)
Jim Porter and Veronika Gaia in Robinson Basin
(Rick, Sue and Tom stayed a bit lower down the mountain. Something about the road conditions not agreeing with the undercarriage of a new Ford Explorer?
)
Thank you again to all of you. I made new friends, renewed old friendships, learned from all of you, and returned home from the mountains with a renewed spirit.