Gold sunrise at Gunsight Butte

Gunsight Gold. Seen from Alstrom Point.
Stitched from 7 images, Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200 mm f/4.0 at 70 mm, f/4.0, 1/160s, ISO 100.

One of my many panoramic images that you can see here.

Most memorable images from 2016

1. January 31

Pristine. Sunrise at Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 22mm, F/16, 1/3s, ISO 100.
It's a great idea to look back upon a year and choose one's favorite images. I've been going through my images from this year over the last few weeks and, although the year is not over yet, have come up with some favorites or most memorable images. Some of these are not necessarily the best images but they are images that I am fond of. The image above for example was taken on a solo snowshoe hike in #RMNP Jan 31, 2016 where I encountered deeper snow conditions than I'd ever seen in the park. I was the first person up there with pristine snow everywhere (also unplowed road to the trailhead ;-) ) and it was gorgeous. The sunrise didn't materialize much but I got some good images anyway such as the iconic tree above. I also generated several photosphere panoramas that you can see on Google maps. Be sure to drag your mouse all around as these are fully immersive 360x180 spherical panoramas and they really convey what it is like to be there.

• Here is for example Dream Lake. 
• This is my other favorite tree that you can find somewhat above Lake Emerald.
• This is me at Lake Emerald.
• On the way to Lake Hayiaha.

You can find more images from Dream lake, Emerald Lake and Lake Hayiaha in the links.

2. February 21

A river of rock. Calhan Paint Mines.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 22mm, F/8, 1/15s, ISO 100. Focus stack from 5 images to get everything in pristine focus front to back.
I visited the stunning and fairly unknown Calhan Paint mines that are hidden in a little town-run interpretive park for a sunrise on Feb 21, 2016. Since the last time that I was there 100's of very impressive wind mills were added all around it but luckily the views were not spoiled. This is truly an extraordinary place and well worth a visit if you're ever near Colorado Springs. You can find an immersive panorama that I made the same morning in this link.

3. March 13

Radiance. Matthews/Winters park.
Stitch from 4 images from Nikon 1 J4, 10-30 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 10 mm, f/4, 1/400s, f/4.0
I took this photograph on a short hike with my wife and son over Dakota ridge. I ride this on my bike often and it is a beautiful trail. Here we were hiking back to the trailhead and we came upon this scene with clouds lit by sunset light. I often like struggling trees as you can tell.

4. May 13

Golden Dawn. Chautauqua Park, Boulder open space.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/8, 1/30s, ISO 800. Focus stacked.
I was scouting Chautauqua park on May 13, 2016 for a sunrise photography class I would lead the next morning. This is one of the vantage points I identified there. The flowers are fantastic in spring in this place. The next morning was rain and fog the whole time which made for very different but still very interesting images as you can see next. I also hiked up to the royal arch this morning and made a few immersive panoramas there that can be experienced here and here.

5. May 14

Forest scene. Chautauqua Park, Boulder open space.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 72mm, F/8, 1/80s, ISO 450.
I got many images like this the morning of May 14. So different from the day before.

6. June 24

Fairytale Forest. Boulder Brook, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/16, 1s, ISO 100.

This little micro landscape scene can be found along one of my very favorite places in Rocky - Boulder Brook trail. It is reached from the Storm pass trailhead and the nicest parts are hidden from view from the trail but you can easily hear the little waterfalls. In autumn this place gets covered with aspen leaves that make it look like somebody scattered gold coins all around.

7. June 24

Longs glow. Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 48mm, F/16, 1/3s, ISO 100.
The same day as I shot the small forest scene above I drove up to Forest Canyon overlook along Trail Ridge road and enjoyed sunset as it hit Longs peak. Truly a magnificent end of the day.

8. June 25

The ancient one. Mount Evans.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 18mm, F/16, 1/40s, ISO 100.
This image is from a sunrise on Mount Evans in the Mt. Goliath area. When the sunrise didn't materialize much, I hiked around and followed the trail up the mountain and found this tree being backlit by soft morning light. I made the sun peek through some holes in the tree branches and stopped down to f/16 to cause the sunstar to appear. This lens also has the fascinating property that next to sunstars it will show nice diffraction rainbows that are easily visible if you look at the print and even in this web sized version. You can see this image in the rotunda of the Colorado state capitol building for a few more months.

9. July 16

Ice Lake Dusk. Ice Lakes Basin, San Juan Mountains, Colorado.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 18mm, F/16, 20s, ISO 100.
This image was taken on a night I spent in Ice Lakes Basin near Silverton. This is a stunningly beautiful place with seas of wildflowers, gorgeous glacially fed lakes, and rugged peaks. I was here to photograph star trails as you can see in this image. I like this image a bit better than the star trails image due to the streakiness of the clouds. If you look carefully you will spot a yellow tent on the shelf on the right. I made a time lapse of the individual images in the star trails image but I haven't shared this anywhere yet.

10. September 30

Ephemeral Glow. Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 34mm, F/11, 1/40s, ISO 400.
This image is from a wonderful fall sunset hike I took with my son up to Lake Bierstadt and back. We hiked up the Moraine which was covered in aspen trees that were in full fall regalia. I took many images but this is one of my favorites for sure. Afterwards we had a great mexican dinner in Estes Park.

11. September 30

Night on the Moraine. Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85 mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, F/8, 30s, ISO 100.
This is from the same fall sunset hike as the previous image. This was way after sunset when we were hiking down. The very long exposure caused the lights from one of the RMNP busses to smear out causing the little S in the center. The dusk light really deepened the color of the fall leaves.

12. October 23

Curving. Chasm Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park.
Stitched from 3 images. Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, F/16, 1/6s, ISO 100.
On October 23 I hiked up to Chasm Lake together with my good friend Jean-David to see the sunrise. We discovered many small patches of ice on the edge of the lake and I used this one as a nice foreground element. The blobs are drops hanging from the bottom of the ice. This was a glorious morning in an amazing place. I also created an immersive panorama that you can experience in this link.

I hope you enjoyed this series of images as much as I enjoyed showing them to you! Happy holidays and a happy new year to all.

The glow

Intimate landscape in Zion National Park's Taylor Canyon. We were here at sunrise time and the light hitting the canyon walls bathed everything in a red glow.

The glow.
Nikon D300, 3 images stitched. Nikon 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 50 mm, f/16, 2.0s, ISO 200

Dream Lake October 2007

One of the major advantages of shooting raw is that you can go back later and process using newer processing tools and styles. Certainly in the last 8 years not just the quality of cameras but also the quality of tools has increased tremendously. In 2007, I made my first sunrise trek to Dream Lake and beyond. I have never blogged on those images but have shared a few on my website. However, at the time I was disappointed with the color in many of the images as they came up in Lightroom. I had also taken a few images on Velvia that were much better with respect to color and detail but I lacked a good scanner so I never shared those either. I was testing scanning some film using a viewer and a macro lens on my DSLR and naturally did a comparison with the old 6 megapixel DSLR images. It struck me that those images were all processed using the very old processing engine from Lightroom at that time and at a time Lightroom did not have any camera matching profiles. I simply hit reset, which chooses camera default for me and the most current pressing engine and the images came out looking very similar to the Fuji Velvia scans. Sliding a few sliders and they looked better! I also discovered that I had shot many panoramas for stitching at high resolution that I had never seriously stitched because I didn't like the color. Stitching these gave me better resolution than the Fuji Velvia scans. I will share a few of these old, new images below. As always click on the images to see them bigger and two order prints.

"Red Dawn". Nikon D50. Stitched from 3 images each at 18mm Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/8.0 6.0s
This was just before dawn. The mountain was glowing quite outerwordly as you can see.

Purple sunrise. Nikon D50. Stitched from 6 images each at 26 mm Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/4.0 1/40s
When the first light rays hit the top of Hallett peak, the color had changed to purple everywhere.

Radiate. Nikon D50. Stitched from 6 images each at 26 mm Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/4.0 1/40s
Just moments later the color changed again to the more neutral blues you see here.

"A window on time". Nikon D50. Single image. Nikon 18-55mm at 18mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/8.0 1/30s
This is from a single shot but I really liked it. The velvia version of this image has the tree areas almost completely black. The digital shot easily reproduces those.

"Witness" Nikon D50. Stitched from 6 images Nikon 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/11 1/50s
This tree was always intriguing to me and I had set up the shot as you see here, but I had never been able to make it stand out like I wanted. With the more modern tools in the current Lightroom, it was trivial to brush it up a bit and make the whole image pop as I saw when I was there. Works really well in this treatment I think.

Veins

I am very slowly going through my images of White Pocket in the Pariah Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs wilderness where I was last April. Every time I go into those folders in my library I discover new gems. Unfortunately this prevents me from actually getting anywhere as I become too scattered, so I have been taking the approach that I don't even try and just pick one image once in a while that I work on. The below is one such image. This place is full of landscapes and lines such as this at every corner. The colors were really quite amazing this morning. Deep reds, yellows, and pinks all over the place. The below scene really reminded me of veins or marbling. There were many opportunities here for abstracts, but in the end I decided to show some sky here too.

Veins

Veins. On smugmug. On Flickr. On facebook. On Google+
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 0.5s, ISO 100

A Dream sunrise

Last week, I went for a sunrise in Rocky Mountain National Park. The original plan was to go for sunrise at Lake Helene or Two Rivers lake to photograph sunrise on Notchtop. However those plans were scuttled due to a miscommunication with the friend that was coming with me. We both thought the other was picking us up. So we arrived too late to get to Helene. Due to this delay, we decided to divert to Dream Lake for sunrise, which you can easily get to in half an hour or so. It looked like it was going to rain and overcast completely. Luckily right at sunrise, an opening in the clouds at the horizon let through a spectacular sunrise.

This is looking back in the direction of the rising sun not long before sunrise. The glow is starting.

Ushering Dawn. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 1.6s, ISO 100.

A few minutes later an almost unearthly glow was starting on Hallett peak and Dragon Couloir. There was a strong breeze kicking up waves on the lake which gives the water a smoky appearance.

Dreams of Snakes. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 2.5s, ISO 100.

I also created a horizontal version of this image using another tree trunk as the foreground element.

Smoke on the water, fire in the ... . Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 1s, ISO 100.

A little later, the color got really intense and a few very short breaks in the wind allowed me to compose images that included a reflection. This was really quite spectacular. Very little editing went into these pictures. I did also move back a little bit to get some more quiet water.

The quiet. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 0.8s, ISO 100.

The color was changing rapidly at this point. This image has a somewhat more perfect reflection but the sky was already taking on more blues. The light was fading in and out all the time due to the patchy clouds on the horizon as you can see in the first image above.

Upside Down Dream. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 1.0s, ISO 100.

I also made a portrait version of this. I like both a lot. This one again has more direct light on the peaks compared to the previous shot

Reflection. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm at 16mm, f/16, 0.4s, ISO 100.

At this point, we moved on to Emerald, Hayiaha, Mills and more. On the way to Emerald. I came across a small strand of Aspen trees that was backlit and really glowed. This is a handheld shot.

Trees. Bigger and prints.
Nikon D600, Nikon 24-85mm at 28mm, f/11, 1/25s, ISO 100.

More tk.

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

Emerald Lake full 360 degrees interactive pano

Enjoy:

Views: equirectangular panorama of Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park at sunrise. More images from this place: http://smu.gs/1n7yt8W #landscape #panorama #sunrise #photosphere by Jao van de Lagemaat

Cathedral Spires sunrise

Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/16, 1/5s, ISO 100

Cathedral Spires Glow. Sunrise casts alpenglow on the majestic spires over Sky Pond, a high alpine lake in Rocky Mountain National Park's Loch Vale.

The cracked eggs

In the beginning of April I spent some time in the Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness. This is an extraordinary place which one could explore for days and days. We did a sunset around the area people call "Stone Wings" and I shot a very nice star trail image there (more on that later - it takes quite a bit of explaining). The next morning, we went for sunrise to an area called the "Cracked Eggs". It is exactly as the name implies. Below is a small slideshow of images from this extraordinarily nice location. For those on iOS or Android tablets, you should be able to see the slideshow here by clicking slideshow in the link. I'll post detail on the images later.

Portal - a quiet Mount Toll reflection

Mount Toll is an iconic peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Usually you see this peak from a completely different angle. In September I decided to hike up to try and see a glacial lake that is clear on the topo map above the well-known Blue Lake and made it over the moraine in time. I wrote about that hike before here and here and there is a gallery that has images from it here. Going through my library looking for some images to test print on some nice paper I got from Santa, I came across the below image that I had somehow ignored first time around but that really struck my eye.

Portal. Bigger and Prints. On facebook. On flickr.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28 mm f/2.8 at 19 mm, f/22, 1/3s, ISO 100.

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.

Indian Peaks morning

Last weekend, I went on a short sunrise hike with friends from the cmc Dan and Jon at the Arapahoe Pass Trail in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. We waited for sunrise at a very steep waterfall that had quite a few flowers around it. Unfortunately there was so much wind there that all the flowers were getting blurred in all our pictures, so I have 100 images with blurs where the flowers are supposed to be. Most of the high resolution stitches I tried to do at sunrise didn't work for that same reason either. Also, the clouds prevented the sun from rising at its scheduled time and it didn't show for 20 minutes after sunrise. I did come away with some images I like though that I'll post over time. Here are a few to start. As always, click on the images for a bigger version.

Arapahoe Pass Trail Sunrise. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/6s, ISO 100.

I was standing in the waterfall to take this image. Luckily my boots are still fairly waterproof. Below is the same waterfall looking up. I also have an interesting image of about the same viewpoint taken on the way back down in different light that I will post later.

From hither. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/8s, ISO 100.

There were enormous amounts of flowers along the trail. Here is a cluster of Columbines that I really liked.

Stack. Buy a print. At flickr. On facebook.
Nikon D600, Nikon 70-200mm f/4 at 140mm, f/4, 1/80s, ISO 400.

Spectators. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/10s, ISO 100.

I have a lot more to share from this very pleasant morning. In the mean time, I'll share with you this map with the geomapped locations of all the pictures I took that morning on it. I love this feature in Lightroom. I generate gpx tracks using my phone. Import the tracks into Lightroom and just autotag the entire series of images in one click. Couldn't be simpler.

Embedded Panoramas.

Finally there appears to be a way to embed 360 degree panoramas on web pages. I found the method detailed here. The premise of the article is over the top but if this works at least I'll have a platform independent way of embedding panoramas. There are some java based tools out there, but java is a security nightmare and there is a quicktime plugin method but this doesn't work on iPhones and Android. This might work everywhere although you have to apparently host the image on Google Plus which has the weird problem of lowering the resolution automatically. Perhaps it will work fine hosted somewhere else

This Panorama was taken on the tip of White Crack in Canyonlands National Park.

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.

Icy Reflection

This is an image from Emerald Lake that I captured on a hike up to Emerald Lake for sunrise on December 30th of last year. I have posted on this trip before on this blog and I have many images from this that you can already see in my Emerald Lake gallery mixed in with older images. I spent a long time out on the ice this day capturing many images of the ice and reflections on it. I will post more from this extraordinarily beautiful place but for now here is an image created by stitching 9 images from my D600. This image will print wall sized with amazing detail. Click on the image for a larger view.

Emerald Ice Dragon. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On G+.
High resolution composite from 9 images from a Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 100.

Let the light be right

In browsing through my images from last week's Moab trip I came across a set of images that are almost exactly 1 day apart but are framed almost identically. One taken several hours into the day in relatively harsh daylight and the other shortly after sunrise in soft light. Both were taken looking out from Dead Horse Point towards Canyonlands National Park. In the first, we visited it with the group to scout it out. The next day, I was the only one to rise in time and drive over to catch the sunrise. It had looked like it would snow that morning and be cloudy all around so everybody had more or less decided to stay in. However, I could see stars when around 4 am I stepped outside the hotel, so I set off by myself and had an awesome morning.

On the left, the daylight image. On the right, the sunrise image softened even more by the presence of clouds. The moral of this story of course is that getting up early pays...

I'll blog about the Dead Horse Point sunrise sometime later. In the mean time, here is a link to the above sunrise image in it's full glory.