Painted Hand Pueblo, Canyon of the Ancients

            Faced again with the challenge of shooting something that has been photographed so many times.  How to make it original?  

I tried an original composition.  I had done a lot of reaserch on this place, and had it on my list of must shoot places on our recent trip to Utah/ Colorado to look at Anasazi/Puebloian ruins.  We started as we always do with a trip to the visitors center.  However, because we were there around Thanksgiving, the center was apparently closed all week!

No biggie, the visitors center is actually quite far from the sites, so we just set out for the sites.  Lowery Pueblo was first, Painted Hand second.  The weather was the issue.,  

We made a home base at a hotel in Montechello Utah.  There was nothing that we wanted to see there, per se, but it was about an hour from everyplace we did want to see.  The thing is, micro climates out there are AMAZING.  Just about every day of this one week trip, we woke to snow outside the hotel.  And not just light, cute snow, but crazy wind with white out conditions.  It was bad.  But every day we laced up the snow boots, added 5 layers each, and set out into the cold to brave the day.  

On this day we thought for sure we would not be able to see any of the locations I had picked out because the snow was horrible. However, the further we drove, the better the weather got.  When we got to The Canyon of the Ancients on Colorado the weather was great!  Still a bit chilly, but not bad, and the sun was out between dynamic sky's.  For photography, you can't ask for anything more!   There was even snow here and there, though I could not use any to frame the ruin here.  I was thrilled to get some color though, thanks to the sun and the fact that the desert always seems to be more colorful than most imagine.  

Let me know what you think.

Taken in: United States / Colorado / Dolores (show map)

Taken on: November 24, 2019

Tags:

ruin

anasazi

ancient

national

park

monument

landscape

color

snow

cold

colorado

brick

architecture

native

american

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Sets appears in: • Southwest • National Parks and Monuments

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