Purple Dawn at Alstrom Point

Purple Dawn. Alstrom Point. April 9 2014.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/5.6, 30s, ISO 100.

I found this image hiding in my library. It is from a trip with photographer friends that I did in 2014 to Bisti Badlands, Alstrom Point, and White Pocket. On my way back I swung by Bryce Canyon and Calf Creek Falls. The above image had been lurking in my Lightroom catalog for quite a while, me not realizing the potential of the image. I think I now actually like it as one of the best images from that sunrise. This is a while before sunrise as you can see from the stars still being visible but a purple glow was on the clouds already and a yellow glow started at the horizon announcing the coming sunrise. If you want to see more pictures, here is an earlier blog post on this place.

Soft rays

I discovered that an earlier photo from the sunrise at Blue Lake (see yesterday's post) has an intriguing atmospheric effect in it. There are some subtle rays visible in the sky that appear to converge onto Mount Toll. Of course they do not actually converge but are parallel lines that appear convergent due to perspective. They look to be caused by light scattering of sunrise light in the high atmosphere that hits higher altitudes moisture before it hits the peak itself.

Soft rays. Bigger and prints. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 17mm, f/16, 6s, ISO 100.

An Equinox sunrise

On the day of the fall equinox, I went to see the sunrise at one of my favorite locations in the front range mountains, Blue Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. My old friend Jean-David joined me. I don't often get to go out with others for these crazy sunrise hikes so this was great. We were greeted at the lake with very little wind, which is something that almost never happens in this place as well a fantastically colorful sunrise. A major treat. I took a series of images at sunrise with the same framing.

This image was taken just before sunrise:

before. Bigger. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 100

The moment of sunrise:

The moment. Bigger. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100

Right after sunrise the color was most intense:

Intense. Bigger. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 0.6s, ISO 100

I created quite a few more images of this place, including the full 360 degrees panorama shown below. Click and drag to zoom around:

Views: Blue Lake spherical. This High lake is in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and is gorgeous at sunrise. Rarely is the surface of this lake still enough for a good reflection but today I got reasonably lucky. by Jao van de Lagemaat

Panorama at Upper Blue Lake

Here is a panorama done at Upper Blue Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The sunrise light was just hitting Mount Toll. I have a few more images from here to share. Those that want to look ahead can check out my Indian Peaks gallery on smugmug. Hopefully this can provide some sunshine in the rain and flood drenched Colorado.

Upper Blue Lake sunrise panorama. Buy a print. Photo on facebook. On flickr. on Google+.
Stitched panorama from 7 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 20mm, f/22, 1/3s, ISO 100.

Sunrise reflection of Mount Toll in Upper Blue Lake

Continuing with the last post's thread, here is an image of Mount Toll in the Indian Peaks Wilderness being reflected in Upper Blue Lake. This morning's sunrise was amazingly brilliant and changed color from deep red to the yellow you see here in the course of a few minutes. It is always an amazing privilege to be able to go to these places and see Nature's impressive displays.

Sunrise hits Mount Toll in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Buy a print. On facebook. On flickr. On Google+.
Boring tech info: Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 20mm, f/22, 0.4s, ISO 100.

Here is the exact location for this image:
View Larger Map

Indian Peaks Sunrise

I spent this morning before sunrise hiking up to Upper Blue Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. This lake is A ways above the well-known Blue Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and which is a popular hike from Brainard Lake. Not many people go to the upper lakes as it is quite a scramble up a steep moraine behind which the upper lake is hidden. I had an absolutely lovely morning at this lake watching the sun come up. Here is a first image from this where I am looking east towards the plains where the sun is just about to come up.

Sunrise at Upper Blue Lake. Buy a print. On Facebook. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 20mm, f/22, 0.4s, ISO 100.

Dead Horse Point sunrise

Last February I went on a little trip to photograph the Moab area with some old and new friends. I've posted some pictures from a sunset in Arches already as well as Colorado National Monument. Interestingly, both those sets of images were taken when I had not yet met up with the group. Here I will post a set of pictures from after I met up with them, but rather ironically from me on my own again. This morning, I went out on my own as the others had thought that it would only be ugly and cloudy at our planned location - Dead Horse Point. However, I got out at 4 am to look at the sky and actually saw stars and so decided to go anyway and had a glorious morning.

Some links to start: Gallery and prints on smugmug. Gallery on flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.

Dead Horse Point Sunrise. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 9 images. Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 45 mm, f/22, 0.4s, ISO 100.
This high resolution composite has over 100MP of resolution and will print wall sized with impeccable detail. I aimed it to have the curve in the tree trunk mirror the bend in the river as well as potash road which you can see just below the river.

Thelma and Louise. Buy a print.
Nikon D600, Nikkon 70-200 mm f/4.0 at 70mm, f/5.6, 1/80s, ISO 100.
A detail showing the island in the sky region in Canyonlands National Park. The title is a reference to the fact that the movie had Thelma and Louise drive into the "Grand Canyon" in this spot.

Dead Horse Point Sunrise Panorama. Buy a print. You definitely should see this larger as the blog format is not very wide.
Stitched from 7 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 1/10s, ISO 100.

Swoop. Buy a print.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 100.
A horizontal framing of the top image on this post.

Cradled. Buy a print.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 24 mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 100.
There are many nice compositions to be found along the rim as you can see.

Red Dawn. Buy a print. Another image you really should see large.
Stitched from 9 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16 mm, f/16, 1/20s, ISO 100.
This is a little later in the morning and taken from the very edge point of DHP. The tree on the far right of the image is the same tree as on the first image above. Standing on this tip you feel really exposed as just over the edge is a looooong way down.

Canyonlands sunrise

Taken from Gooseberry on the White Rim.

Dish. Buy a print.
On Flickr. On Facebook. On G+

Ephemeral pool sunrise

Continuing on yesterday's theme, here is one of the ephemeral pothole pools on the White Rim at dawn. These potholes are very interesting in that they harbor extremely hardy life such as brine shrimp that can survive long periods of drought and resprout to life when there is some rain.


The eye - ephemeral pool in Canyonlands NP. Buy a print.
Assembled into ultrahigh resolution (50 MP) from 2 sets of 9 images each from a D300 with Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 34 mm, f/16, 1/5s (exposed for the sky) and 2.5s (exposed for foreground)
Smugmug enlarge. Flickr page. Google+.

Sunrise at Mount Galbraith

Mount Galbraith is a basically unknown open space park just west of Golden. It's accessed right off Golden Gate Canyon road. The morning these images were created last weekend, I was originally planning to go up in the mountains, but a combination of factors made me rethink that. The extremely high avalanche danger made me a little apprehensive about the location I had chosen and the roads leading there were extremely slick after the big Friday snow storm. So I chose to stay in a little longer and drive up to Mount Galbraith where I had taken some nice cloudy sunset images before (see here, here, and here) and where I had discovered a very nice tree that overlooked Golden, Denver and the plains that for sure would be offer some nice opportunities at sunrise. It's rare to need snowshoes in the foothills, but this day I needed them.


Sunrise over the plains. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 16 images.
Individual shot technical data: Nikon D300, Nikkor 35 mm f1.8 DX, f/13, 1/125s, ISO 200
Same image on flickr. Same on Google+.

This is the tree and down below you can see Golden and North Table Mountain. You should really check it out large by clicking on it.

I also made a panorama at this same spot:


Wideness. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 10 images.
Individual shots: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11 mm, f/13, 1/100s, ISO 200

Again, seeing this large is the only way.

This is the tree from the other, sunlit side.


Glowing. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 8 images.
Individual shot technical data: Nikon D300, Nikkor 35 mm f1.8 DX, f/13, 1/60s, ISO 200

I saw a lot of deer from which I will post some pictures later. Now I focus just on the landscapes.

This image was taken on the other side of Mount Galbraith long after the sun had come up but the shadows were still very very cool.


Hot and Cold. Buy a print.
Technical data: Single shot Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 15 mm, f/10, 1/200s, ISO 200
Google+ post. Same image on flickr.

The hills you see in the back are I think those in White Ranch open space park and Golden Gate Canyon state park. I really like the very strong hot/cold contrast you get here between the shadows and the sunlit areas. This is really what it looked like to me. I lifted the shadows out of the darkness by using a graduated neutral density filter but to your eyes the shadows looked this crazy blue in contrast with the warm, sunlit areas.

On the back of Mount Galbraith there is also a large area of burnt trees from an area that burned last spring. These offer some interesting opportunities but are hard to frame effectively.

Dance of the skeletons. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 8 images.
Individual shots: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 11 mm, f/11, 1/80s, ISO 200

Hope you enjoyed these as much as I enjoyed my morning that time.

Fifteen minutes

I haven't had time to do much with my images from Sunday morning yet (let alone the gigantic backlog of images that I think need to be shown off), but I wanted to share the below juxtaposition. The two images are both composites of 9 images each. The two sets were taken 15 minutes apart. The left one about 13 minutes before sunrise, and the right one about a minute or two after that. The difference in mood and color is very large as I am sure I don't have to tell you. I always love the light just before sunrise. A minute later after the second image the sunrise light got even more intense as I already showed yesterday. the Click the image to see the comparison larger. The mountain is Notchtop mountain and the frozen lake is called Lake Helene. The lake is reached after a 3.2 miles hike from Bear Lake trailhead. Normally that is an easy hike (moderate in the guide books) but at night in the blowing snow and with a disappearing trail because of that, that is a little more challenging. More about that later.

Because of the format of this blog, I can only include a small image inline here, so you should really click to scale it up to a nicer size.

Click for bigger. Not posted online for sale yet, but will be soon - I promise.

A Notchtop Morning

I was out at Lake Helene yesterday morning and it was just absolutely spectacular if not very cold and quite deep in the snow (I had not expected to need snowshoes so I was sinking deep at every step). I am still going through the images but I quickly wanted to already share this image with you. It shows Notchtop mountain at the moment of sunrise but covered with a blanket of clouds. The wind was so fierce that these clouds were puffing around really quickly almost as if I was looking at a timelapse video but happening in real life. Quite neat.


A Notchtop morning. Buy a print.
Tech info. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mmf/3.5-5..6 at 24mm. f/16, 1/13s. Raw image developed in Lightroom.
Same image on Flickr. Relevant Google+ post.

Chasm Lake at dawn

Prelinks before the post:

• Smugmug gallery of images
• Flickr gallery (includes some extra images)

Last Saturday, I finally was able to get myself out of bed at an ungodly hour of 2 am in order to photograph the sunrise at Chasm Lake. I had been planning to do this for a long time and my research showed that the light was still good, but wouldn't be for very long anymore. Chasm Lake is at the foot of Longs Peak (yes no apostrophe) in Rocky Mountain National Park. I remembered vaguely that it was a good distance hike as I had done it several times before and I had looked around for hiking times. One guide book and a web page mentioned about 3h20m for the 4.2 mile hike, which seemed long to me, but perhaps the altitude makes it more difficult. So I got up at 2 am, turned on the coffee machine and got dressed and hopped into he car hoping that the coffee would keep me awake. It was more the blaring car stereo that did it though. I got at the trailhead parking (which was almost full already as is normal on the weekend) at around 3:30 am, and started hiking at 3:45. Since the sun was going to rise around 6:46, which I knew owing to the GPS and to checking the location in the excellent TPE app programmed by fellow Colorado photographer Stephen Trainor, I thought I'd better hurry if I want to catch the predawn glow. Along the trail which is initially mostly in the forest, I passed many very friendly folks (it's a strangely social event going up this trail around 4 am because of all the people attempting to summit Longs). Up above the treeline, the starry sky was spectacular (moonless night) and I could clearly see the Denver metropolitan area. I scrambled the last few boulders and saw the lake and Longs' diamond face before me. However, it was still very dark. I checked my watch and it was only 5:30 am, still over an hour to go and apparently if you're motivated, 3h20m turns into only 1h45m, giving me plenty of time to check out some locations. I chatted a little with some very cold climbers that had bivouacked there and found some locations right next to the water and waited for the sun to come up.

Waiting for the sun to come, I tried to make some star trail images realized that I did not bring a remote release. This oversight stops one's ability to make bulb exposures so I had to work around this by combining multiple 30 second exposures, with the result that the star trails look like morse code. Next time better I guess. The star trails are more easily visible in the image when you click on it.


Shortly before day break, the sky and mountains started glowing beautifully purple. The image below was taken 20 minutes before sunrise using a 13 second exposure.



Ten minutes later I generated the following high-resolution composite on which you can see the lake more fully as well as the lake shore.



At about 6:46 am this is what it looked like. The mountain was suddenly on fire and the glow contained oranges, reds, and magentas and even bright yellow in the vertical ledge in the middle:



A more close-up view is here:


After about 5 minutes, suddenly the sun disappeared behind a hazy layer for a few minutes and the light turned sullen grey. I was afraid that the good light would be gone already after only a few (but intense) minutes. Here is a link to an image during this grey period. However, this was by far not the end of it, and 5 minutes later, the sun came back with a vengeance. Now the mountain and the lake where bright yellow:



There are some more colorful images on the smugmug gallery.

Looking over my shoulder I could see another photographer shooting further away from the lake but pointing in the same direction (I wonder why?). I wanted to go meet him/her but he/she was already gone when I was ready to move on. So I decided to continue my journey along the north side of the lake towards the bottom of the diamond. This was a hard scramble over a large boulder field, some traversing along a big slab and following a snow field with a deep chasm on the side up. Finally on the tip of a moraine, I took some images looking straight up at Longs using extreme wide angles. Here is a good example:



Amazing that people climb this. I have quite a few friends who have done it, but I can't imagine what it is like not being a technical climber. I could see some climbers going up and if you look at the full res (60 MP+) version of my images you can see people. More clearly could I see climbers going up Lamb's slide to the left:



I had my breakfast up here and headed back. Talked to some climbers I met that were just coming up and snapped some images such as this of the lake and Ship's prow:



Crossing the stream I came upon this view, which unfortunately I had not found before. I think this is the view to get at sunrise:



I converted it to black and white here as I thought it quite dramatic. If you mouse over you can see the color version. The blue of the sky was extremely deep even without polarizers.

On the way down in the forest I noticed some turning Aspen:


I think they provide a nice conclusion to the post.

Sunrise at Blue lake

Order prints from the gallery here.

Flickr set.



This Saturday morning, I got out of bed before 4am and took off for a hike in the Indian Peaks wilderness area. I had been to this place many years ago and had taken some pictures, one of which is one of my most popular pictures on flickr. The objective this day was to return to the same spot and check out the sunrise. I had checked out Google's awesome Google earth and had seen that contrary to summer, this time of year the rising sun shines straight through the valley. The reason for this gets obvious if you check out the below terrain map from Google maps:


View Larger Map

The object is Blue lake, the lake that is slightly to the left of the middle of the map. The glacial valley leading up to it points slightly south of due east. You reach this point from the Mitchell lake trailhead in the Lake brainard recreation area. From that point it is about a 2.5 mile hike to Blue lake. In summer this trail is spectacular for all its wildflowers. Its also an extremely popular trail because of this and its location right next to the 13er Mount Audubon (strangely called Mt. Autobahn amongst Boulderites). Now I would be doing it in the dark, so I prepared everything the night before and set off at 4 am. At about 5:30 I had reached Lake Brainard. The road from Ward was open just like the lady from the forest service had told me. She had not told me that the road was closed at the lake, adding another 0.6 mile or so to my total hike. Mine was the only car there and I took off hiking. After looking at the "beware of mountain lions" sign (see end of post for a daylight image) at the deserted actual trailhead, I set off on the real trail. The moon was out and I didn't even notice for a long while that the batteries in my headlamp had died. Hiking was easy and following the path too as this is a well-trodden trail. When I started coming up to the moraine that separates the lake from the rest of the valley, I looked back and saw that the sky was an amazing purple and yellow glow from the sun being just below the horizon:


Bigger in this link

I reached the lake just before civil twilight (about 6.45 am it would start) and started taking some long exposures of the Boulder I had shot so many years ago with Mount Toll in the background. Here is an example:


Bigger in this link

These colors are very close to what I saw. The water had a purple appearance, the sky sort of steel with a magenta tinge and the mountain had started glowing. Rocks like this were deposited by a glacier that must have sat in this valley a long time ago. The often look like a giant has put them down in random spots. The lake looks so downy because of the long exposure - a fun effect here making it seem even more ethereal.
A few minutes before actual sunrise, the mountain got a slight magenta glow:


Bigger in this link

After which at dawn, it suddenly turned completely on fire:


Bigger in this link

The color was just absolutely amazing and I shot many images all around (which is why the vantage point on the rock and Toll changes all the time): One minute after dawn it looked like this.


Bigger in this link

The appearance of the mountain was rather incongruous with the feeling in my fingers. Now the colors were changing very rapidly. This image was taken 6 minutes after dawn:


Bigger in this link

I shot several panoramas that I'll post some other time. For now, I'll point you to the smugmug gallery from which you can order prints where I put a few of the panoramas already. The flickr set of this trip is here.

I had some breakfast looking into the upcoming sun and noted how quickly the color changed. After just half an hour, the color was very flat and not much was left, so I gave up the plan to go to the upper blue lake and left that plan for next time I go here. My pinching boots (don't know why they suddenly started pinching) might have had something to do with it. Here is an example of the color at that point:



I love the deep blue though.
Going down, I shot some grab shots of the lakes I saw on the way.




At Lake Mitchell, I saw the first other hikers. They were going up to go fishing in Blue Lake. Close to Lake Mitchell is the Mitchell lake trailhead, where I took a picture of the mountain lion sign:



I especially liked advice #1: "Walk in groups and make plenty of noise." Unfortunately, there are not many people I can get to go out this early. The only time I have seen a mountain lion in Colorado was when a few months ago two of them were mating not ten feet from our tents near Durango. The sound they make is like an animal that gets skinned alive. It is absolutely amazing. At the time I had not realized that they were mating and I could not see very well what animal was below, so at time I had thought something was getting killed by the enormous lion on top (it was rather dark and they were in the bushes at the side of the creek we were camping near). One of those experiences you never forget I guess. My daughter and my very young brother and sister had been playing a lot in that creek during the day.

Anyway. After the deserted trailhead, I hiked over the road towards my car and saw Scott, a guy I know from my dayjob as a famous ;-) scientist. He was starting on Mount "Autobahn." At the parking lot, I saw that I now was far from the only car. There must have been over a hundred in the different lots that are at Brainard Lake. Also driving down Brainard Lake road, lots and lots of folks in the ubiquitous (in the Boulder area at least) Toyota SUVs and pickups and Subarus were coming up. Funny that people still had to start while I was done for the day.

Redid sunrise panorama

I just redid a sunrise 360 degrees fully immersive panorama I made at Emerald Lake. I combined multiple sets sets of exposures for this result. The old version had the sunlit area blown out.

I turned this into a nice QTVR too, but I don;t have a good place to host that yet. I'll post it when I do. When I took these photos, I hiked up from the trailhead far before sunrise. Always fun, especially when it is snowy and icy ;-). For these 360 degree panoramas, I use the awesome 10.5 mm fisheye and a homebuilt device that can be seen here:



I stitch using the awesome open source/freeware hugin using enblend.

Weird formations in Bryce

Just a few pics for your enjoyment! Larger versions available by following the links. I love the early morning light in these images. These are mostly in the Queen Anne's garden area.

The three sisters:


Pedestal for a tree:


Lean-to:


Shadows:


Dawn color panorama:


Throne :


Courtyard :