My dad recently retired. To celebrate, I joined my parents on a road trip through Colorado. In this first part I’ll cover some of the images I took while we were staying in Colorado Springs.

One of the first places we went was Pike’s Peak. As we were driving up the mountain, from about halfway up, we could see this huge rainstorm in the distance. It was a moment I knew I wanted to capture, so we pulled over, and I grabbed this shot.

When we made it to the top of Pike’s Peak it was cold and the air was thin, but you could see for miles. As I was framing up shots what I liked most about this one was the way that the ridge from Pike’s Peak lead down to the lake below and flowed into the layers of mountains up to the horizon.

We started off the next day by visiting the Royal Gorge. It’s the kind of place where there is so much to take in it’s impossible to fit it all in the frame, so I had to narrow down what I was composing. With this image I especially liked the way the light was coming through the clouds to create a spotlight on this particular area of the gorge.

Later in the day we visited a town named Victor with a lot of old-fashioned architecture. Just outside of town was this abandoned mining elevator. Gravel trail, wood fence, all of it leading up to the mining elevator; it’s an obvious shot, but how could you not?

The elevator itself was tall and impressive, but its dormant silence was slightly eerie. It’s a stark reminder that no machine works forever. Making this picture black and white helped show all the texture and rust that the metal is wearing now.

The sky and the drama it gives these images helps tie them together. They were all taken at times of the day when the light was brightest and considered harsh, but the clouds, and in the first picture the rain that fell from them, softened the light and added interest to the shots.

If you’d like to come along on this first part of the trip and see a couple more images from around Colorado Springs then you should definitely check out the video below. Part 2 will come out next month. Bye for now.