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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 we booked the trip in January. She’s a bit more … mobile, shall we say.

But we had a very good time, and ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised with the images I returned home with. In the moment, we both were a bit distracted trying to keep our daughter entertained, engaged, and safe. We worked hard every hour of the trip, just not on photography. Or so it seemed.

Switzerland is a lavishly colorful place. Blessed with ample rain, fertile soil and some of the most chiseled mountains on this planet, it’s hard to take bad images. And if you are the type who comes home with 2,900 images on an external hard drive that need sorting, correcting and categorizing (I am raising my hand as I type this), an unfortunate thing starts to happen. You become numb to emerald green, cobalt blue and buttercup yellow.

Since Tanager Photography started in 2007, I’ve maintained that I am a color photographer. Tanagers are colorful birds, and they travel great distances. But I found myself appreciating a new aesthetic with my Swiss images, and it surprised me — desaturation. It’s nothing revolutionary, and believe me, I’m not acting like I just invented the iPad here. But as I edited my images and adjusted them, I couldn’t help but get excited seeing some of them transform as I moved the saturation slider to the left.

Our trip took us to four distinct places, each with their own photogenic qualities: Lucerne, with its wooden chapel bridge (above right and below); the Berner Oberland with its hulking glacier-clad peaks and lush pastures; Zermatt with the mighty Matterhorn (top); and Zürich, where scores of clock towers seem to suggest that the Swiss are punctual or something.

I’ll devote a later post to where and what to shoot in Lucerne, but its really all about that picturesque wooden bridge with its colorful flower trellises and multi-hued riverfront. I must have shot every conceivable angle on that bridge, but what rounded out the collection wasn’t a fresh angle so much as it was a treatment. By desaturating, the textures of the wood rose to the surface, making my collection of images on the bridge a lot more three dimensional.

The same thing occurred with my images from the Berner Oberland. Here you have the towering, snowy triumvirate of the Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger graced with these verdant green fields — truly one of the most spectacular scenes on earth — and yet, the temptation is to point a wide angle lens on it and turn the saturation up to 11 because that’s how it looks. In hindsight, one of my top pictures from the area was a simple shallow depth of field portrait of a pine-cone decoration hanging on the door of a house in Wengen (second from the top). Easiest shot in the world, and yet, when paired down and drained of its color, it just seemed to complete the other, wide-angle, saturated shots in my collection.

In Zermatt, where the landscape is drier and more harsh, adding a black-and-white treatment here and there seemed to give the land a new interpretation — that of a hostile moonscape covered in ice. I felt that the mountains surrounding Zermatt had been tamed by too much man-made activity (trams, trains, gondolas, cables, roads, girders, pipes, everywhere). Extracting that brutal harshness in the glacial landscape seemed like a nice counterpoint.

Ultimately, what gets me excited about travel photography is the whole collection from a place. Does it tell a story? In Switzerland, that story is buried in the textures of the land, the buildings and the people, and its not so easy to see at first. It wasn’t until I was at home in Denver, working in Lightroom, that I started to see these images come together in a way that was exciting as a whole. It took draining the color from select scenes — an act that defied my style as an artist — to make sense of the Swiss story.

Coming up: mountain porn, waterfalls, tilt-shifting Switzerland and shooters guides to Lucern, Zürich, Zermatt and the Berner Oberland. The Tanager Blog will be a busy place for the next few weeks.

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 for no other reason than the major personal changes I’ve undergone since my last post.

I’ve started my own company.

Not a hobby company. Not a dabble-in-it-and-see-if-it-fits company.

A livelihood. A bona fide “wow, this is what I ought to be doing in life” company.

My business is called Headwaters Content, and its one of Denver’s first content strategy firms. What brought this about is a long and probably boring story (I think it’s interesting. You probably don’t). But needless to say, maintaining a photo blog has been a free-time activity, and since February, setting Headwaters up has been rather consuming, both from a labor-intensive and mentally fatiguing perspective.

So this weekend, Hailey and I set up the white seamless and took some head shots, as we were both in need of them for our company websites. And since our daughter is cuter than us both, and she couldn’t be left alone for more than 30 seconds, we brought her into the pictures.

So where does this leave Tanager Photography? I’m not sure. The passion is still very intense. I want to continue to take compelling images and share them with friends, family and an audience online. It’s just not a bill payer, so it can’t be my top free-time priority anymore because, well, free time doesn’t really exist the way it used to.

But we’ll be traveling soon, and I’ll be bringing my gear and obsessing over morning light conditions in no time. It won’t be another four months before I post new images. No way.

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-thing beaches that seem to be nestled into every corner of the Garden Isle. In fact, after visiting Kauai for eight days, it may be safe to say I’m forever spoiled. The bar will be high for any future strips of sand I encounter (sorry, Chatfield Reservoir).

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We spent so much time discovering new beaches, I’m still picking sand out of my hair. Here are the 10 best I visited, with a few challengers we didn’t have enough time to see.

1. Ke’e Beach (near Haena) – It’s one thing to feel like you are driving to the end of the earth. It’s another thing to see a fiery sunset when you get there. Still another thing to have a rainbow hanging in the sky from where you just came from. Such was the majesty of Ke’e Beach on our final night on the island. Situated at the end of the road on the rugged North Shore, Ke’e Beach is the jumping off point for the Kalalau Trail along the Na Pali Coast, and it beholds a stellar view of the sea cliffs, especially in the evening hour. A ringed reef gives the illusion of safe swimming, but this being winter, the currents were brutal, and swimming was off limits. That was fine: watching the pyramids of rolling water pound the reef was just as thrilling as the misty explosion of light caressing the Na Pali.

2. Kauapea Beach (near Kilauea) – This gorgeous beach is often referred to as “Secret Beach” — “Misnomer Beach” might be more appropriate, especially when its located off of, I kid you not, “Secret Beach Road.” But while it has been discovered, it is still pristine, expansive, and filled with so many intimate coves, tide pools and empty strips of sand, you could spend day after day going back. We trekked down the 1/4-mile-long trail and promptly found a private platform of fine sand — elevated from the rough surf and ringed by black volcanic rock — for our 8-month-old daughter to dig into. A mile down the beach (after passing my brother and his family playing wave chase) we discovered sand-bottom tide pools replenished by the surf. This is how beaches should be … endless, vast and full of treasures.

3. Kalihiwai Beach (near Kilaeua) – To the west of Kauapea Beach lies this local fave on Kalihiwai Bay. My 7-year-old and 4-year-old nephews loved it for boogie-boarding, and I loved it for the curtains of mist that flooded the cove and created incredible light conditions … and seemingly endless creative possibilities for photography. Kalihiwai Stream feeds into the beach, and next time, I’d like to take a kayak up this beautiful river to Kalihiwai Falls.

4. Black Pot Beach/Hanalei Bay (Hanalei) – Here’s what I recommend: go to Java Kai in Hanalei before sunrise and get a cup of coffee and a surfer sandwich (bacon and eggs on an English muffin), and take it to Black Pot Beach where the Hanalei River meets the sea. Try to time it so that you witness the full moon set and the sun rise simultaneously, followed by a long stroll around the bay for as long as your legs can take you. Repeat every morning you’re there.

5. Haena Beach Park/Tunnels (Haena) – If for no other reason than to stare at powerful waves for an hour. This was the second beach we saw on the trip, and for a Kauai newbie like me, it was gripping. By late November, the waves get enormous in the Hawaiian Islands, and the breakers pounding the reef off of adjacent Tunnels Beach were easily 20-feet high. Nearby is Maniniholo Dry Cave, which is apparently where Puff the Magic Dragon lives (or where his inspired creators got massively baked and creatively mispronounced the nearest town Hon-uh-LEE!).

6. ‘Anini Beach Park (near Kilauea) – We stayed across the street from ‘Anini Beach, which was a shrewd move with four kids in tow. Nowhere else on the North Shore (or the rest of the island, from what I saw) has calmer waters than ‘Anini. A lengthy reef nearly a mile offshore protects this lagoon, and harbors the perfect habitat for green sea turtles (I swam with four of them in a 20-minute span). It’s not a particularly photogenic beach, but to really have it work its full effect on you, I recommend you go for a swim just after dawn. Do breaststroke, and use the distant Kilauea Lighthouse as your beacon. It will be one of most memorable swims you ever take.

7. Poipu Beach Park (Poipu) – What? A beach on the South Shore? I know: I’m not showing much love for the drier side of the island in this post. We made it down this way thrice: once to drive up Waimea Canyon, once we flew over it, and on the third visit, we actually went in the water. Where we dabbled in the sea and snorkeled with parrotfish was at Poipu Beach, easily the most crowded scene we would encounter all week, but not in a way that inhibited the magic of the place. In addition to the best snorkeling of our trip, we witnessed a magnificent sunset over the tidepools down the road, on the other side of Brennecke Beach.

8. Kalapaki Beach (Lihue) – After three or four visits to Kauai, this might not make the top 10, but it makes my list for nostalgic reasons. We departed on Thanksgiving night, and Kalapaki Beach is where we hung out before our 8pm flight (we also ate at Duke’s, but I’ll leave that for the food post later on). A ukelele duet provided the soundtrack, while the girls danced and the boys rolled on the perfectly manicured grass. It was a place where our family showed just happy and content we all are with life right now.

9. Kealia Beach (near Kapaa) – It’s impossible to miss Kealia en route to the North Shore. Stretching like a lazy hammock under a grove of trees twisted by the wind, this surf-pounded beach is as inviting as they come. It’s also a big surfing and boogie-boarding spot.

10. Larsen’s Beach (near Anahola) – This was the beach that made me realize just how different in character every beach on Kauai is. Located on the northeast corner of the island, Larsen’s feels arid and empty. This is what I imagine Lanai feeling like. Of course, like nearly every beach on this trip, the surf was up and going in the water would have been foolish. So instead my baby daughter tried to eat coral bits on the beach and my nephew discovered a mammoth, grotesque-but-totally-awesome blue lobster head on the beach.

So I was there for only eight days and will admit that I can’t call this the definitive list of Kauai beaches until I visit Honopu Beach, Lumahai Beach, Hideaway’s Beach, Lydgate Beach Park, Mahaulepu Beach, Shipwreck Beach and Polihale Beach. What other beaches do I need to visit next time? Comment below.

More Kauai-oriented posts to come in the next few weeks.

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 bright than their surroundings, making an even exposure especially tricky.

But then my wife took our daughter there for a day trip this past October (I was attending the Colorado Governor’s Conference on Tourism in nearby Snowmass) and she returned with a series of astonishingly original photos of the Bells. How did she overcome my two stumbling blocks?

Solution #1: visit the Maroon Bells with an adorable baby and let her eat the dirt on the shore of Maroon Lake — original photos abound — and …

Solution #2: visit in the fall when the sunlight is slanted and the exposure is more even.

Our daughter’s middle name is Autumn, and this being her first fall, well, it was especially meaningful to have the two of them join me in Snowmass for the conference. After the day’s sessions, I’d take Varenna off of Mom’s hands for a little bit, and go for a short jaunt through the aspens with her near the hotel. She’d squeal and kick with delight at being outside, at facing forward in the Baby Bjorn carrier, and at the sights and sounds and smells of the woods. She’s a Coloradan by birth, and already she is acting like one.

So when the conference ended and I had a little freedom to wander, we returned to Maroon Bells as a family and spent a few hours in the aspen glades and along the lake shore, watching a blizzard of leaves flutter over the lake as autumn had one last gasp before winter.

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 World Heritage site (so is Macchu Piccu, the Roman Coliseum, and the Pyramids of Egypt).

But time and distance had conspired in my head to keep me from going. Why? It is 8 hours by car from Denver … so is Billings, Montana.

I last visited when I was two years old. Naturally, that shouldn’t count as “having been there.” However, one of the earliest memories of my life is from when we went into the kiva at Cedar Tree House (below). I think it stands out to me because we descended a ladder into a hole in the ground. That’s got to mess with your head when your that young.

So we arrived at Mesa Verde after another long afternoon in the car. Varenna had slept for much of the uneventful journey, but by the time we weaved through the emerald gambel-oak forest that covers the mesa just inside the park entrance, she was kicking and screaming. Emotionally, I kept feeling like we were being selfish for going on this trip, but the wonderful thing about six-month-olds is how short their memory is. One stop, one good break to roll around on a blanket, and everything is right with the world again.

After checking into the underwhelming Far View Lodge (run by ARAMARK, a hospitality company that only works where it has no competition: like stadiums, national parks, college campuses, etc., explaining why the standards for food and bedding are so low), we gently buckled Varenna back up and drove 20 minutes south to see the only dwelling we could reach before sundown — Cedar Tree House (left in second photos above), considered the best preserved dwelling, and home to the reconstructed kiva that you can climb down into.

By the time we reached it, however, it was closed for the day, gated off across the grotto, with a phalanx of 50 to 60 vultures watching vigil over it from the trees above. It appeared that a forest fire had at one point reached the top of the dwelling and been beaten back. The sky burst into lavendar and pink, and an eerie silence permeated the whole scene. No wonder the Ute Indians didn’t like this mesa after it was abandoned. There was definitely a haunted vibe. The only sign of life came from a family of turkeys on the rocks above the dwelling who humorously chased the vultures.

The next day, we traveled to Wetherill Mesa, which practically comprises half the park but only sees 20% of the park’s visitors. There we took a hiking tour to Long House with a nasally, patronizing guide who — despite her smarter-than-you tone — provided an impressive amount of information on the Ancestral Puebloan Indians, their way of life, and their subsequent disappearance from the mesa. Long House was especially fascinating because of the seep spring at the back of the dwelling, which filled cups chipped into the stone drip-by-drip (above right). How they were able to keep the entire population of the dwelling hydrated off this meager faucet is mystifying, amazing and admirable.

There was also an amazing structure hanging above the dwelling (below), apparently reserved for food storage.

Taking photos on a guided tour can be a little awkward (“uh-huh, uh-huh <click> … I’m listening <click>”) but its the only way to gain access to the dwellings, and for good reason. They would certainly get trashed (accidentally by the klutzy and intentionally by the greedy) if they weren’t heavily policed and patrolled. Even backing up to frame a shot, I had to be careful not to bump into an ancient brick wall.

Maybe if you gave tours to people like me, you’d take on a patronizing tone over time.

We were in Snowmass so I could attend the Colorado Governor’s Conference on Tourism. I spent much of the time in conference rooms, banquets and exhibit halls, while Hailey and Varenna got to explore. By Friday, however, I was liberated from the indoors and allowed a few hours to see Maroon Bells (above), the most famous mountains in Colorado, if not North America. They were stunning.

More to come … but first I’d like to plow through the rest of Telluride, Mesa Verde and Pagosa Springs.

And for the record, after these past three months, I am more in love with Colorado than ever before.

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 United States.” (OK, there. I said it.) But for all of its majestic grandeur and quaint homeliness, it is a not a place that one would call “down-to-earth,” “approachable,” or “realistic.” We toured an open house — a 2500-square-foot Victorian two blocks off main — that was going for $3.2 million. I witnessed a morning rush hour on quiet little Lizard Head Pass that consisted of commuters driving in from Rico (28 miles south), and maybe even Dolores (67 miles south) — all flocking to this enchanting little town to work in the wine bars, day spas and five-star hotels. How this community functions is a bit of a mystery, but it does function. It functions magnificently. I want to go back. I’d put it on top of my U.S. destination list all over again.

And incredibly, in late August, it wasn’t too steep. We stayed at the New Sheridan Hotel on Main Street (that’s Varenna in our room, above) for less than $175. In the middle of winter, that would go for about $335. We ate a superb dinner, one of the best meals of the year, at 221 South Oak Restaurant for the same price as pretty much any nice sit-down restaurant in Denver. Hey: we were on vacation. Why not? And when you consider the crappy room we paid more for in Mesa Verde (not to mention the regrettable $13 “Navajo taco” Aramark doled out there), Telluride seemed like — gasp! — a great value.

Still, this thought about people actually living there would not leave my head. Maybe it was because the night before, while eating dinner in an empty dining room at the Chipeta Sun Lodge, I told Hailey I could retire to Ridgway. It is gorgeous there as well, but it also felt cozy, livable, and … realistic. Telluride? It just didn’t add up how you could get to a point in your life where that was attainable.

But ask me now what the highlight of our late-summer trip was, and I wouldn’t hesitate. It was this place. I’m a sucker for massive mountains, waterfalls spouting off in every direction, lush greenery everywhere you go. I like my scenery without subtly, and if I can have a medium-rare elk chop with asparagus and lingonberries for dinner beneath that landscape? Sold.

(Hello, I’m a great big panorama … click on me for larger version)

Night one concluded with an amazing scene on Main Street. A full moon rising over the San Juan’s at the end of the valley. It was one of those stirring scenes you can’t turn away from. They happen all the time in Colorado, but this one was especially gripping. I stood out in the middle of the street with my camera on a tripod, firing off exposures trying to get it just right. Trying to put in perspective the magnificent beauty of these mountains … until a drunk stumbled out of the New Sheridan and asked me for a good burger.

Like I said … it’s nice visiting a fantasy world for a few days.

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 few places we have not experienced yet (Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado National Monument) plus some old favorites (Telluride, Ridgway, Ouray, Pagosa Springs).

Southwest Colorado is God’s country. I don’t say that lightly or because its late at night and I am out of words. It is simply a staggering place. The landscape is a beautiful dichotomy: overwhelming and intimate at the same time. When you are not picking your jaw up off the ground because of the vaulted peaks, plummeting waterfalls and sheer canyons, your finding yourself in a cozy valley or by a fresh gurgling river, thinking about retirement because the place is so livable.

On this trip we visited Mesa Verde National Park for the first time since we were kids (Hailey was 7 when she visited with her family, I was 2). Until now, the context of Colorado’s indigenous people was little more than knowledge to me. As an editor and as a writer, I knew quite a bit about their civilization and its rise and subsequent migration away from the mesa. But knowing and understanding are two different things sometimes. You have to go there to truly visualize and appreciate the systems that connected the dwellings and people of the mesa.

Here is a Google Map of the entire trip’s itinerary:

I’ll have more — plenty more — to come in the next few weeks. Lots more Colorado travel coming up (fall color in Steamboat and Snowmass) and then the year’s big trip around Thanksgiving: Kauai.

Years later, when I was in high school, my Mom and I finally ventured beyond Long Lake to Lake Isabelle, and the thundering waterfall that pours out of its eastern outlet. Here, down among the bluebells and shooting stars, I thought how nice it would be to have a child some day, perhaps a daughter, and show her the wonders of nature — like how the wildflowers below Lake Isabelle grow out of rocks, their persistence a testament to a higher power at work.

Maybe I’d name her Isabelle.

Fast-forward to this past year, and Hailey’s pregnancy, and those closest to me (including my Mom and my best friend Matt) were convinced that if we’d have a girl, she’d be named Isabelle.

Of course, it didn’t end up that way. For one, Twilight or some damn thing made it one of the most popular girl names of the moment. For two, Hailey and I went to Lake Como in 2005 and found a little town that meant a lot to both of us, and here we are, with a girl named Varenna.

Nonetheless, the meaning and the feeling of the Indian Peaks and sharing it with my daughter, is something that has been top of my mind this summer. She’s five months old, so that “higher power” is a bit over her head, but she loves the woods and the fresh air. A few weeks ago — on a Friday off that I truly earned — Hailey, my mother, Varenna and I, went for a short hike to Mitchell Lake, one valley over from Long Lake and Lake Isabelle. It was short and sweet, but to walk with the three women of my life through fields of wildflowers for the better part of a day is something I will cherish forever.

Two weeks later, I returned to the Indian Peaks with my best friend, Matt. He probably needs little introduction since he’s been on this blog so many times, but it was another unforgettable hike in the Indian Peaks — because of equal parts terrain and time and stories with a man I’ve known since I was 4 years old.

Matt and I experienced the Indian Peaks in a very different way than I did with my girls. Starting at 9am, we climbed up the valley that stretches from Eldora Ski Area to Arapaho Pass. Dipping into the valley base to cross the North Fork of Middle Boulder Creek at a waterfall, we looped back and up the ridge to Diamond Lake, before continuing through the woods and up through amazing meadows to an unnamed ridge at 11,400 feet that faced south to Mount Evans.

Matt was his usual enthusiastic self, up there. “Awww, man. This is awesome!” Me? I kept making HD videos of the tundra and the clouds, which were moving across the mountaintops at a pace I’ve never seen before. For better or worse (most likely worse) I approach video like a still composition, and have no editing skills. I’d upload them here, but they’re 100MB each and I don’t have the patience.

We reapplied sunscreen and descended the mountain back through hip-deep wildflowers. At Diamond Lake, we scrambled onto some boulders that jutted out from the creek outlet and watched the clouds roll by. Not a bad way to pass a summer Sunday in Colorado…

Speaking of which, Hailey, Varenna and I are about to embark on a 6-day odyssey through Southwestern Colorado: Colorado National Monument, Ridgway, Telluride, Mesa Verde and Pagosa Springs. Should have a ton of updates in the coming weeks.

Just by the barn, I discovered a few clumps of lupine, their crisp leaves and candy-like blossoms at their most perfect.

By now my jean cuffs were soaked to the knee from walking through the tall heather, but I was genuinely loving every minute of this. It wasn’t just the freedom to wander and shoot images, but the conditions were exceptional, too. Any kind of photographer dreams of moments like this where all the elements converge in a beautiful way — light, shadow, color; nature, architecture, highway. Everything looked magical, and I had the whole scene to myself.

To photograph the lupine and grass pods, I crouched low and shot into the sun with two prime lenses — a 50mm f/1.8 and a 24mm f/1.4. With less glass than a zoom lens, I find the compositions simpler and less prone to nasty flares.

As I trudged through the thick grass back to the road, the burn off was beginning. Fog strands were peeling back and revealing a remarkable summer blue sky. A robin perched on a nearby fence post, swallows wheeled in the air eating mosquitos, and an occasional pickup truck drove by at 10 mph. Surely the drivers were savoring the remarkable moment, too, unwilling to do the posted 25 mph.