After the snowstorm of the previous week, spring was back in Colorado, and we celebrated with a hike. Our destination was the Pawnee Buttes, located in the Pawnee National Grasslands in eastern Colorado. This area sees a lot more crowds than it did when we first started traveling here twenty years ago, but the empty prairies can still fit a lot of people. Once we wandered off the main trail, we were completely alone and social distancing was no longer a problem.
Actually, we weren’t completely alone- at one point we startled a porcupine. I’m not sure what it was doing out here. Although there were a handful of trees where we found it, it’s probably a hundred miles to a proper forest.
What I love about the Pawnee buttes are the wide open spaces, and the sky that keeps going forever. Near the beginning of our hike, I tried to capture this with a prairie landscape, and this became my favorite image of the week.
Pawnee Buttes
Fujifilm X-T2, Fujinon XF 10-24 f/4 R OIS at 10mm, f/8 at 1/1250, ISO 200
Digital Darkroom. No unusual manipulations here. I stuck with the Provia film simulation; Velvia added a noticeable magenta tint. I increased exposure and contrast. Bumped up the shadows and tamed the highlights. I added some detail with both texture and dehaze, and gave vibrance a small nudge.
WIRR stands for Weekly Image Rich Ruh. This regular feature on Das Has von Ruh will show and describe my favorite photo created during this weekly period. My weeks start on Mondays, as does the WIRR. I’m hoping to include commentary on the story, the setting, the specs, or the sentiments, depending on the circumstances.
Das Haus von Ruh 