The Creative's Corner

I love taking photographs. Every time I walk out the door with my camera, it’s an adventure. Following are the results of my adventures of 2010. These are my favorite photographs of the year, along with a little back story for each one. You can find all of these images at www.JeffColburn.com

Changing Colors

When the leaves started changing colors I went up to the Flagstaff, Arizona area to capture this wonderful event. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wasn’t going to be very helpful. The first weekend I dealt with rain and sleet. The second weekend (above) I had a flat gray sky and snow. But the thing about shooting outside is that you have to be flexible. Even though the light was bad, I saw this great image of leave changing, backed by snow and snow covered trees. A great image showing Fall going into Winter. You can find a tutorial on my blog about how I worked with this image in Photoshop. I’m very happy with the results.

Changing Colors

Early on the morning of my third weekend a strong wind started to blow. When I arrived to take pictures at about 8:00 am, almost all of the leaves had been blown off of the trees. I went to all of my favorite places and found some great pictures, including this one. There are no leaves, but the white bark against the blue sky, and all the tiny branches, wonderful.

Gold King Mine

The Gold King Mine and Ghost Town in Jerome, Arizona has an amazing collection of things big and small. There’s a working saw mill, two mine shafts, old vehicles and mining equipment and much more. This was an old desk that had great lighting. I was only able to spend an hour there, but I’m planning on going back in a week or two for several hours of shooting.

Old Car, Gold King Mine

This is a broken windshield on an old car at the Gold King Mine. It looked like a lot of things to me, frozen pond water, something organic, a crystalline structure, and more.

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is an amazing place to shoot. The changing light always gives you something new to photograph. The only problem is if you’re trying to shoot at sunrise and sunset. That’s because you only have about 10 minutes of that wonderful light. As the sun was setting on this day I was running frantically down the path, taking pictures of as many places as possible before the light went away. I was very happy with my results.

P.S. We like to go to the Grand Canyon on the free park days, it saves us the $25 admission fee.

The Grand Canyon

This photo was taken on my second trip to the Grand Canyon. We were walking on a trail next to the edge, and there were many places where the edge of the canyon was just a foot or two away. There were patches of ice where we were walking too. One slip and it would be at least a 500-foot fall to the bottom of The Canyon. What a rush.

The Grand Canyon

Here’s another image taken from the precarious trail. The sun was about an hour from setting, and the shadows were getting long, which really adds depth to photos of The Canyon.

The Yellow Meadow

This is an old fence post taken at a meadow south of Flagstaff, Arizona that’s full of yellow wildflowers. There was a section of the fence made up of old tree stumps and branches that were weathered and full of character. The wood is so weathered it almost looks like a black and white photo.

The Granite Dells

A few miles north of Prescott, Arizona is an area called the Granite Dells. It’s a huge area filled with weathered and decomposing granite. The stones have unusual shapes and look like an alien landscape. There are also two lakes in the Dells, and you can hike, fish, camp, rock climb, boat and much more. It’s a great place. I call this photo Rock In Repose.

The Granite Dells

This photo is also from the Dells. I wanted to capture the weathered rock, the yellow lichen and the amazing blue sky.

I hope you liked these photographs. You can see more at www.JeffColburn.com, and they are all for sale as prints or for stock images.

Have Fun,
Jeff