A hiker I met on the Tenderfoot Trail a couple of years ago told me that her ambition was to hike every mile of Boulder County’s trails. While that’s not one of my ambitions, I expect to get close to that goal before I’m 80.

I do like to go to places that I have never seen before. Today I climbed to Bummer’s Rock for the first time. This trail in the Betasso Preserve overlooks Boulder at elevation 5,430 feet from a height of 6,670 feet.
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Even the best photos that I took yesterday at Rock Creek Farm disappointed me. While the views were stunning, they weren’t sharp.

I was sure that the problem was me instead of the camera — “user error.” But I had made so many changes to the setup of my new Canon 50D single lens reflex camera that it took me a few hours last night to figure out where I had gone wrong.

The day before a local professional photographer, Doug Goodin, came over to my apartment and graciously spent more than two hours educating me. His visit was great fun, and he taught me more tricks and tips than I had picked up from any other source.

Doug is a photographic purist who generally avoids filters and doesn’t boost sharpness or saturation in his pictures.
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The only other time I ever went to Rock Creek Farm was just after I came to Colorado and I didn’t have any sense.

I went out in the middle of a scorching summer day. Even worse were the mosquitoes that ate up a good part of me.

But when I got there about 6:30 this morning it was cold enough to put up the hood of my down jacket and wear hand warmers in my gloves. Then the sun came up and presented this glorious sight of the Halloween and Thanksgiving season.
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The sun rose over Langerman Reservoir this morning. The event occurred at 7:28 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time.

Suddenly a huge ball of fire appeared low in the eastern sky. The world awoke. In an instant night changed into day.

First, the sky turned to gold. Then, as the light struck the water it too transformed itself.
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The diabetes support group met at my apartment this morning. We are a group of men committed to controlling our diabetes with a very low-carb diet. We limit the group to nine men, and six of us participated in this month’s meeting. One member of the group who is working on his dissertation about diabetes and depression at Naropa University here led a spirited discussion on the topic today.

But even before our group met this morning, I managed to get out before sunrise for my regular hike and photo shoot. This is certainly the best time for landscape photography. Also for our bodies. Years ago my sister told me that when we do our exercise at the beginning of the day it sets us up nicely for the whole rest of the day, and my experience bears out her recommendation.
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Today I began my first beginning yoga class. Believe it or not, but until today I have lived 73 years without coming close to a yoga class. What a mistake!

I love it. The emphasis on breathing, relaxation, and gentle stretching for flexibility was positively joyous for me. I will certainly continue with yoga and will write about it at healthcentral.com to encourage other people with diabetes to do this wonderful form of exercise.

Because my exercise this morning was yoga, I didn’t go hiking. And since I wasn’t out on the trail, I didn’t have a good reason to use my new camera. Until this evening.
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The good thing about the shorter days of fall is that I don’t have to get up quite so early to capture the beautiful early morning light with my camera. Sunrise today didn’t come until 7:20, and I was ready.

I went for the first time to Pella Crossing, which is out on the high plains a few miles north of Boulder. But it wasn’t quite ready for me. For the first hour after sunrise huge cloud bank to the east blocked the sun except on the mountain peaks.

But with my camera on my heavy tripod I was able to capture this image of the first light on Longs Peak at a low ISO (low noise) setting. I minimized camera shake by also using mirror lockup and the self-timer. When I got back home, however, I realized that I hadn’t turned off image stabilization, maybe because it seems counterintuitive to do that.
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Two of my favorite romantic movies are “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset.” These turn out to be some of the best times not only for love but also for landscape photography.

“As a landscape photographer, you can only shoot two times a day: (1) dawn and (2) dusk.” So writes Scott Kelby in The Digital Photography Book, which I finished reading last night. He says that we can shoot from about 15 to 30 minutes before sunrise, from 30 minutes to an hour afterward and then from 15 to 30 minutes before sunset and up to 30 minutes afterward.

That sure makes landscape photography sound like a part-time job! However, there is the slight problem of hiking the trail before and after the shoot. And the split shift is as bad as restaurant hours when you have to work lunch and dinner shifts as I did once in my youth.
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The creek was dry today. But the heavens weren’t.

It started to drizzle when I reached the end of the Dry Creek Trail at Baseline Reservoir. I went there to scout out good foregrounds for sunset pictures.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. But the Dry Creek Trail was beautiful on this damp, moody afternoon even if I got a little wet.
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For more than an hour this morning I was lost somewhere in the foothills above Boulder. I was trying to find the southern end of the Switzerland Trail. I still don’t know if I came close or not.

But not until I came to the historic mining settlement of the oddly-named “Wall Street” did I know where I was. I backtracked to another historic mining settlement called “Sunset” that I had passed miles earlier.

But Sunset is nowhere near the southern end of the Switzerland Trial. It is in fact at the middle. I seem to have arrived there the first time today via a different four-wheel drive road.

Eventually, I found a level four-wheel track leading north out of Sunset. I knew that the Switzerland Trail was level, because it is a former railroad bed. When I saw the sign “No Winter Maintenance,” I knew that I was on the right track, because I had noticed a similar sign at the other end when I parked there last week to hike the northern section of the Switzerland Trail.
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