Boulder brook - Rocky Mountain National Park

I was reminded this morning of the fact that I have a long list of posts still to write and push out about images I created last year in Rocky Mountain National Park. The radio was talking about how the park might get shutdown with the impending gub'mint (or however you spell this in redneck drawl) shutdown. I deeply love this park and every time I go there I come back with new images. One of the images I am going to show below has long graced the side panel on this blog, but apart from being used to show how waterfalls can be stitched months ago, I have not actually told people about this place. These images were taken on a rainy late afternoon in the glacier gorge area of RMNP. I showed some images from this day earlier and haven't shown any images yet from another waterfall I visited in between. The current post is about a place called Boulder Brook. This is a fairly unknown, hidden gem that is reached by walking a mile or so from the Storm Pass trailhead. It is a tiny brook that snakes its way down through a dense aspen forest. In fall therefore, it is littered with golden aspen leaves as can be seen in the image below:


Combined from 9 images at ISO 200, f/13, 2.0s. 15-55 mm at 45 mm. Buy a print. The same image is also on flickr.

Some more variations on this are here and here.

I was in this place basically at sunset and it was raining softly so I did not need any filters to slow down the water. In the full image (also visible in the tight crop here), what is really striking are the red rootas of the moss that hang into the water. The color of these is quite stunning and contrasts well with the green of the moss and the yellow of the leaves.

I made some other images at different places two. This is one I like that I call divergence.

Combined from 9 images at ISO 200, f/16, 2.0s. 15-55 mm at 34 mm. Buy a print.

A different view of the same rock is here.

At this point it got really dark and it became almost impossible to know what I was doing, but I got some more nice images of a fairly wide waterfall very up close. This one I call nano-Niagara


Combined from 12 images at ISO 200, f/11, 3.0s. 15-55 mm at 50 mm. Buy a print.

I am basically almost touching the sticks here. A different framing is here.

After these shots I hiked back out and close to the trailhead I came accross another opportunity that I very quickly took. This is one shot at 30 seconds with a 3 stop grad ND filter to darken the sky. It was basically pitch dark and I needed 30 seconds at f5.6 and ISO 200. I am not making prints available of this at the moment as I don't think it has enough quality because the wind was blowing the camera around, but I still want to share it. It would be good enough for smallish prints of 8x10 and under.



I like the dreamy quality of the clouds and the color it seems to have picked up from somewhere.