Beautiful Landscapes

              I have always loved photography.  From my high school days as the newspaper photographer to my college days when I took group pictures of coeds in their residence halls to our most recent trip to Utah, Nevada and California, I love the beauty, creativity and challenge that photography affords me and the people places and things that I wish to remember beyond the moment. 

            In recent years, I have found myself drawn even more to landscapes.  It doesn’t matter whether they be in deserts, mountains, woods, forests, or any other environment, I look for beauty and always find it.  And usually, I like to have a camera to help me retain the memory.  I’ve even enjoyed taking pictures with my cell phone although that instrument lends itself more to objects which are closer.

            Some of my older posts are of some lists of the music I like (I will be doing another one soon), I thought that I would share some of the landscapes that I enjoy.  Some of the more “mundane” are pictures that I have taken, while the more “exotic” pictures are ones that I’ve come upon.  If I took it, I will give myself credit.  

            Just a note from a photography novice about a whole new way of taking pictures.  It's called HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography.  To quote Wikipedia, "HDR is a range of methods to provide higher dynamic range from the imaging process.  Non-HDR cameras take pictures at one exposure level with a limited contrast range.  This results in the loss of detail in bright and dark areas of a picture, depending on whether the camera had a low or high exposure setting.  HDR compensates for this loss of detail by taking multiple pictures at different exposure levels and intelligently stitching them together to produce a picture that is representative in both dark and bright areas."  Some of the landscapes I have chosen, such as the first one below, uses this technology, and are notably different in the amount of contrast range.  The pictures that I have taken will be noticeably "duller" that those HDR pictures.  If you don't notice it, I will note HDR pictures in the descriptions below the pictures.  Enjoy!!!

An HDR picture! Doesn't it look and feel cold?

From our big trip, on a trail overlooking a riverbed 

My picture, hiking in nearby mountains with glorious foilage  

Another HDR picture by National Geographic.  See how the colors pop!

From our big trip, desolate Utah beauty to me

Also from our big trip, majesty and beauty in Yosemite

A sepia tone landscape picture in Missouri. The shot is of a place called Adam-Ondi-Ahman

From our Alaska trip, a calm pond in verdant green

Yes, it's another HDR pic of a volcanic eruption with lightning

Swiss mountain landscape

From our Alaska trip, part of the town of Juneau with a cruise ship in the foreground

Just a beautiful lush landscape

An HDR pic, this of some Andes mountains in Argentina's Patagonia

A shot from our cruise ship of an unnamed glacier carving a valley to the cold sea

Isn't this simply breathtaking?

Mt. Fuji splendor

Would you dare walk on that?

My picture on a hike in nearby mountains

Canadian beauty with an oh-so-green lake

Guess where this landscape is?