I recently had the privilege of meeting up with one of my long-time photography friends, Kris, to take a photowalk. We used to meet up fairly regularly when we were both living in Texas, but after my move to Colorado, the distance was just *a little* too far. Now that she’s in Colorado too, I’m hoping we can make it a more frequent thing because everything is better with friends. Especially photowalks.

I chose a spot to meet that I hadn’t been to before, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Turns out, Kris hadn’t been there either, so we set out exploring the space as first-timers together. The area was much larger than I expected and we chose a parking area at random to begin our mini-adventure.

The fall colors were showing off and we wandered in and out of trails around a nearby pond, catching up and snapping pictures along the way. As I was photographing, I played around with where my focus point should be in a few different compositions. Since I have a tendency to shoot with a lower aperture, my change in focus points made a bigger difference in how the photos turned out:

I’m not surprised that I prefer the image on the left over the one on the right, but it’s always good to see how they turn out, regardless. Another thing that I was doing as I was shooting on this trip was imaging in my head how I might edit the shots I was taking in the moment. I noticed a stump of a tree half submerged in the water and I immediately knew I was going to turn the image into a black and white photo when I edited the images later.

After our get-together, I reached out to Kris to see if she would be willing to share any of the shots she took and I’m happy that she agreed. After shooting together so many times before, I was not surprised to find that we had a very similar eye when framing our compositions, Kris on the left and mine on the right:

We noticed a lot of the same things, but there were a few great shots she captured that I didn’t even see.

All in all, it was wonderful to spend time with a friend doing something that we both love. And now I’m looking forward to our next adventure together! – Angie