Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

This week, Patti Moed asks us to share our personal inspiration in our photography. She writes in part, “As we move ahead to LAPC #160, we are inviting you to share photos of your inspiration. What does your inspiration look like? It can be a place, a subject, a person, or a book, for example. Actually, it can be just about anything that inspires you.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

To misquote and paraphrase Thomas Edison, inspiration is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. The image above, for example, is one of my favorites. What inspired me was the coloration of the duck and the interesting pattern of reflections in the water. The duck was very near the shoreline and the autumn weather caused the shoreline plants to lose their green appearance. The brown and the white tones in the reflection were created by the shoreline plants.

The original image from the D-500 Nikon didn’t reflect what I saw in my original composition. Manipulating the photo in Lightroom and Luminar gave the reflections much more emphasis. Adding structure and clarity added also to the duck’s appearance.

Highlands Ranch is one of the largest planned communities in the country and comprises three zip codes around Littleton, Colorado. It is also soon to be the former residence of a personal inspiration for me, Fred Mast, who will soon be moving to a different state. Near his home in Highlands Ranch, a large park area is preserved for the residents. There are plenty of trails for walking in the summer or cross-country skiing in the winter. A large pond in the park is the home of that duck in the opening photo.

The image of the trees above was inspired by their leaning in the same direction, no doubt created by the strong prevailing winds. I am attracted to repeating patterns and use them often in my landscape photos.

This image is a more complete view of the pond in the opening photograph. That’s not likely the same duck as the opening image was captured in 2017 and the image above in July of this year.

I am inspired by dramatic skies and sometimes go out of my way to include them in my images. The image above was created by two cell phone photos. I captured the sky and the background of trees in one image and the foreground and creek in a second. I then used Lightroom to join the two images into a single vertical panoramic scene which created an almost square image format. I then used Luminar AI to bring out the structure and details in both the sky and the grass in the foreground.

I skipped over some of the details earlier when I mentioned my friend, Fred Mast. Prior to his retirement, Fred has had many careers, a photographer, correspondent, and Information Technology professional among others. Fred and I met by chance on a social media photo-sharing site and over the few years I’ve known Fred, we have joined forces to photograph our joint travels.

We are both fans of those steam railroad excursions. The image above was captured on the Cumbres-Toltec run between Antonito, Colorado, and Chama, New Mexico. We were standing on opposite corners of the platforms of two cars when one of us had the inspiration to capture each other in the act of taking a photo of the other.

Thank you to Patti for the inspiration to share the views of Highlands Ranch. Given Fred’s impending move, it’s not likely that I will be visiting that park again. On the bright side, I expect Fred and I will be exploring his new part of the country and sites to photograph in Wyoming.

Feel free to click on any of the images above to view them in my Flickr album in HD and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner