Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Feb 5, 2012, 11:16 pm
In Colorado, where I live, you can see forever. Drive in from our airport (whose code should be BFE, not DEN), and you can easily see Pikes Peak some 80 miles south, and Longs Peak, some 55 miles to the north. Compass points of comfort — I grew up always knowing my place in this big, wide landscap...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Feb 4, 2012, 12:49 am
Playa Grande. Big Beach. Not the most imaginative name, but its a name I won’t forget. That’s because this is the beach you dream about on a winter’s day as you are stowed away in a cubicle in some northern city. Sugary golden sand, ever-changing surf and palm trees that burst open like firewo...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jan 29, 2012, 11:30 pm
Hailey, Varenna and I just returned last weekend from a six-day vacation in Cabarete, a beach town on the north shore of the Dominican Republic. We traveled with Hailey’s mom, Diana, who instigated the trip last April. The logic was like many vacations hatched for this time of the year: some place...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jan 23, 2012, 12:11 am
... Park — located about 45 minutes southwest of Denver — has long been a ... stomping ground for me, especially in the last 11 years, since my ... time for a run up to Steamboat Springs — or any of the mountains for that matter — I ... parent’s house and walk into the park. As so...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 17, 2011, 11:06 am
(Click on images for a larger view) It has been a good two years since I did a family portrait shoot, so when I was asked to photograph the Wagner, Lineberry and Lamberton families out at the Wagner family farm near Hudson, Colorado, I was a bit nervous. “How do I do this again?” Fortunately, ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 20, 2011, 12:37 pm
Who cares about Capri? That’s what I was thinking when we were planning our 3-week trip to Italy back in 2008. What I knew of it was that it was a Mediterranean hoity-toity haunt for the rich. Maseratis, casinos and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, right? “Mariah Carey has a house there,” ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 6, 2011, 5:16 pm
(Click on images for a larger view) OK. So it’s been three months since we went to Switzerland, but I’m not done posting images. I’m just catastrophically slow at updating my blog now that I have my own business (by the way, check out our killer website, designed by HeyDay Creative). On top ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 27, 2011, 9:34 pm
(Click on image for a larger view). The highlight of my trip to the Trappers Lake and the Flat Tops area was hanging out with my dad in a rustic, 400-square-foot cabin in the woods. I cooked up spaghetti with red wine sauce one night, and we polished off a bottle of Plungerhead — which plunged my...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 26, 2011, 2:27 pm
Click on images for a larger view. Summer’s end is fast approaching, which usually means two things in Colorado: luscious Palisade peaches are in season, and most of us are wondering whether we got into the mountains enough. I started this summer with plenty in the way of mountain time, but they...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 11, 2011, 12:02 pm
It took nearly an hour to discover what was happening. We had hiked up to this meadow just outside Zermatt, on the trail that eventually leads to Zmutt and the North Face of the Matterhorn. It was getting hot, and Varenna was inspecting the gravel on the trail, handing her best specimens to Mom, an...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 4, 2011, 12:11 am
Photographing the Eiger… Every story needs a bad guy. In the Book of the Berner Oberland, its the Eiger. Its history of mountain climbing is layered with one tragedy after another. From its Wikipedia page: Since 1935, at least sixty-four climbers have died attempting the North Face, earning i...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 28, 2011, 1:23 am
Here’s my dilemma: I have too many good photos from the Berner Oberland for one post. This has little to do with me and my photography skills. It has everything to do with the extreme beauty of the area. Never before have I been anywhere as dramatic and scenic as this alpine region smack in the m...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 22, 2011, 2:53 pm
(Click on images for a larger view) Go ahead. Ogle all you want. Words often fail me. They fail me the most when it comes to mountains. Grandeur. Majesty. Magnificence. Please: those words are chumps when you are beneath the Jungfrau (above two images), a hulking mountain that towers over the Laut...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 18, 2011, 12:39 am
Lucerne is said to be one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. I still have a lot of Europe to cover, but its hard to imagine a cleaner, more idyllic, more photogenic city than Lucerne. The place seems designed for postcards, coffeetable books and small 1-inch-by-1-inch decorative chocolate wrappers...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 13, 2011, 10:16 am
(Click on images for a larger view) I recently spent two weeks touring around Switzerland with my wife and our one-year-old daughter. It was a magnificent trip — one of those get-it-out-of-my-system-now kinds of trips while Varenna is young and portable. Ha! That’s at least what we thought when...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - May 31, 2011, 11:59 pm
You should never start a blog post with an apology for not posting recently. It’s just bad form, and truthfully, who reads this blog regularly anyway? Even if you did, you’d notice that I haven’t posted anything — anything — since January. But I feel the long absence is worth noting, if f...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jan 17, 2011, 12:24 am
I had heard that Kauai’s food was the type of thing to inspire obsession. Actually, I hadn’t heard that. I saw it manifested in my brother, who goes to the Garden Isle almost every year, and who — as a result — now hosts an annual luau with more than 30 menu items from there. Well, here I a...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jan 2, 2011, 12:36 am
On the Friday morning before Thanksgiving, I had a feeling my brother was trying to talk us out of going to Waimea Canyon. It was a long drive, he noted. Time on Kauai was precious, and Varenna — our 8-month-old daughter — would be facing backwards for the whole ride. Poipu had a baby beach. Bu...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Dec 21, 2010, 11:43 am
Hanalei Valley Lookout; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 400, 1/3200 sec, f2.8 I’d hesitate to say I’m “into gear.” I’d rather read a personal finance blog than the Digital Photography Magazine Buyer’s Guide. In writing, gear is just not interesting. Where things get interesting for me is when gea...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Dec 8, 2010, 12:18 am
(Click on images for a larger view) While on Kauai, Hailey and I took a 90-minute helicopter tour of the island with Jack Harter Helicopters. The tour was billed as a photographer’s tour because it went slower and took its time with each section of the trip. Because of this alone, I highly recomm...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Dec 2, 2010, 12:27 am
(Click on the images for a larger view) So remember how a few posts ago, I said that I wasn’t much of a beach person? Well, I’m back from Kauai, and you can consider me converted: I love beaches … if by “beaches” you mean the stunning, drop-yer-jaw, how-could-God-design-such-a-perfect-th...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 24, 2010, 7:55 pm
… Chicken butt. We leave Kauai tomorrow night. Fantastic trip so far.
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 19, 2010, 6:42 pm
We are in Kauai right now, and it … is … awesome. So far, I’ve photographed sunrise from ‘Anini Beach, lunch at Hanalei Juice & Taro Company, Haena Beach Park, the Kilauea Farmer’s Market (where I ran into a college friend who is now a farmer on this island), and this morning, sunrise on K...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 15, 2010, 3:38 pm
(Click on images for a larger view) I’ve struggled to photograph the Maroon Bells in the past. Struggled because of two things: (1) everybody has photographed them and an original angle is getting more and more rare, and (2) they perfectly face to the east and, as a result, are often 2 stops more...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 12, 2010, 12:39 am
Since 2007, Hailey and I have made a special long-weekend trip in the fall to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Yep, the same Steamboat Springs that seems to grace every other post on this blog. I know. We go there a lot. However, it just keeps revealing itself to me in new ways, each time. Each time we...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Nov 2, 2010, 10:00 am
To end the trip with fresh peaches, or to end the trip with hot springs? That was the question. And an easy question at that. For 10 years now, I’ve been wanting to take my wife to Colorado’s best hot springs: The Springs Inn in Pagosa Springs. The only issue was its distance from Denver. A ful...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 30, 2010, 3:13 pm
The last day in Mesa Verde began with our last breakfast at the ARAMARK cafeteria. After this day, we’d at least have options for food, but up on the mesa, it was compromise, compromise, compromise. The day before we tried the “world-famous” Navajo Taco for lunch. It was an utter joke. For ARA...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 26, 2010, 12:00 am
Three days to see Mesa Verde was plenty, but considering that the main cliff dwellings are in canyons, where shadow and sunlight conspire for extreme contrast, we had to carefully plan which sites to visit when for fear of getting the wrong lighting conditions. This meant that we’d save the bigges...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 19, 2010, 11:55 pm
(Click on images for a larger view) Mesa Verde National Park has long been on my list. Located near the Four Corners and home to an extensive network of abandoned dwellings from the Ancestral Puebloan Indians, it is a magical place I should know well. After all, it is in Colorado and its an UNESCO ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 5, 2010, 10:00 am
Before sunrise, I was awake, packed and bundled up for first-light photography of Wilson Peak. Located just southwest of Telluride, this perfectly sculpted mountain has graced its fair share of Coors commercials, and for good reason. Few mountains embody the drama of the Rockies better. I knew of o...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Oct 3, 2010, 12:48 am
Going to briefly interrupt the Southwest Colorado trip with a quick preview of this past week’s trips to Steamboat Springs, Snowmass and Aspen for fall color in the Rockies. We usually have an autumn trip to Steamboat, but this year we added another to the middle part of the state. It’s pretty c...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 29, 2010, 12:06 am
(Click on images for a larger version). There is something to be said for living in a fantasy world. Check that: there is something to be said for visiting a fantasy world … for a few days. Telluride defies description — at least one without hyperbole. Such as “the prettiest town in the Unit...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 24, 2010, 12:49 am
Despite our unfortunate auto mishap outside Delta, we were able to recover our vacation in quick fashion, and it was a good thing, too. It had been since 2002 that Hailey and I had traveled to this pocket of the state, and without a doubt in my mind, it is the finest corner of Colorado. Look at a ma...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 20, 2010, 12:10 am
(Click on images for larger version … especially this shot) Falling a bit behind in updating the blog from our Southwest Colorado trip. Things take priority sometimes: you know, like a full-time job and life with a six-month old. Funny how every spare moment — mornings, nights, weekends — ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 12, 2010, 10:39 am
(Click on image for a larger version) Its amazing that in the absence of sunlight, you can have seemingly limitless opportunity to make a dynamic composition. I love night photography, and would like to do more of it. In Italy, I set up my first (and to this day, only) star-trail shot: a 22-minute ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 8, 2010, 8:00 am
(Click on images for a larger view) I’ve been to about 75% of Colorado in my lifetime. This is in large part because of a three-year stint as the editor of the Colorado Official State Vacation Guide, and also because of a life-long quest of mine to hike in every wilderness area in the state. ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Sep 6, 2010, 2:16 pm
(Click on images for a larger version) In late August, my wife Hailey and I took our daughter Varenna on her first week-long vacation: a swing through Southwestern Colorado to see the state’s absolute best scenery (the San Juan Mountains) and discover some of the blank places on our personal ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 30, 2010, 1:40 am
(Click on images for a larger version). In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting a lot of new imagery of my home state of Colorado. Last Saturday to this past Friday, Hailey, Varenna and I did a swing through Southwest Colorado — our little girl’s first true vacation. We saw some of the f...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 15, 2010, 4:51 pm
My whole life, the Indian Peaks have been my playground. Some of my earliest memories take place on the mucky shores of Long Lake. Back in the early ’80s, there was a decaying cabin in the shallows there, and a tiny beach about 20 square feet in size lay tucked in the grasses and willows right...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Aug 3, 2010, 12:30 am
From the iconic barn — where the fog submerged everything in a cold veil — I drove up the Yampa River Valley to my favorite barn. Things were getting brighter, but the fog remained stubborn and thick. By now, my coffee was gone, and it was tempting to return to the condo for more, but something ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 20, 2010, 10:53 pm
I’ll take fog over sun any morning. Perhaps I say that because I was born and raised in Colorado, where fog is uncommon and usually gone before I’m out of bed. Well, I now have an infant in my life (as I seem to mention in every post), which means 6:30am kinda counts as sleeping in. On ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 12, 2010, 12:46 am
On Saturday afternoon, while Varenna napped at the condo with her mom, I decided to take 60 minutes and photograph my favorite barn in the Yampa River Valley. It’s been a recurring fixture on this blog for a while, mostly in fall splendor. But since this was wildflower season, I thought I̵...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 9, 2010, 11:44 pm
When I was 18 years old, I found photography. Maybe photography found me. My graduation gift from high school was a Nikon FM — a mechanical SLR camera from the late 1970s. Because it lacked a brain of any kind, I had to tell it to do everything, and that was the joy of it. I would take two shots ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jul 6, 2010, 12:07 am
OK, I’m a bit behind on updating the Tanager Blog. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been shooting. It just means this other blog — and its adorable main subject — are stiff competition for attention. So, I’ve been mainly photographing little Varenna and her first four months, and m...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jun 9, 2010, 12:31 am
A few weeks ago on a Thursday night, Hailey, Varenna and I joined my Mom (known as Oma by the grandkids) and we drove down to Colorado Springs for my nephew’s graduation from kindergarten. Doesn’t get much cuter/prouder than this. Andrew was graduating from Giving Tree Montessori School...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jun 2, 2010, 12:27 am
Silence. An earth-rocking, soul-stirring realization in the middle of bitter-cold ranch country outside Kremmling, Colorado. Exactly what a new parent needs: Fresh air and a deafening absence of sound. It was a Friday afternoon, the last day of April. I’d left work early, and the three of us ...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Mar 21, 2010, 11:51 pm
And so an amazing first two weeks at home with our little girl has come to a close. Back to work tomorrow, but the journey, the adventures, the milestones — they will only keep coming with greater regularity. I feel like I’m meeting a new Varenna everyday. A bigger, smarter, savvier littl...
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Mar 14, 2010, 1:45 pm
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Feb 19, 2010, 1:05 am
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Kevin D. posted an article on The Tanager Blog - Jan 22, 2010, 12:18 am
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