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.

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.

Speaking of Dream Lake

Here is an old image from it in winter. I Developed it to be close to what the Velvia looks like that I shot simultaneously (and never scanned at high quality).


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There is also a newly developed vertical composition available here. I need to get back to it and Emerald Lake at sunrise sometime soon.

I'll leave you with a shot of Hallett peak coming up to Emerald Lake (visible through the trees):

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Dream Lake the "other way"

Dream Lake is one of the most photographed places in Rocky Mountain National Park and probably in North America. It is a short and easy hike from the trailhead and can easily be done at sunrise. I've been there many times and am usually passing through. I photographed the sunrise there many years ago at sunrise in the winter. Should do it again some time soon with better gear. The typical way people photograph this lake is looking towards Hallett peak. There are however other nice viewpoints on this lake. One is further up towards Lake Emerald looking back. On the hike to lakes Haiyaha and Emerald with my daughter on labor day, we passed by the lake and I had to take the image again, once on the way up and once on the way down.

On the way up:

Symmetry. Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, ISO 200, f/4.0, 1/80s. Single handheld exposure.
Considering how windy it was at the usual viewpoint where people take pictures I was very surprised how still the lake was here giving a great reflection.

And on the way down:


Clarity. Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, f/8.0, 3.0s, single exposure on tripod.
Also check out the horizontal version of this. Amazing how clear it was here even when I needed a 3 second exposure!

As a comparison here is the shot I took years ago during winter:

Frozen. Nikon D50, Nikon 18-55mm at 18mm, f/8.0, 1/500s, single handheld exposure.
I couldn't go quite as wide yet at that time without tricks as you can see. I just snapped that off as an afterthought, thinking that the light was already gone as it was 2 hours after sunrise or so.

Emerald Lake

Composite of 15 images (see below for the why of this strange number). ISO 100, 18-55 mm at 35 mm, f/14, 1/60s. Click for bigger. Buy a print. Also on flickr.

Last Sunday, I snowshoe'ed up to Emerald Lake in RMNP. My plan was to catch evening light at lake Haiyaha. When I drove in I had a long discussion with the ranger at the entrance station about how the park was not closed. He said that he would have preferred a shutdown because it would make people realize more what was going on in DC. It was nice and sunny at the entrance still. I made my way to the Bear Lake parking lot where there were maybe three cars. The only times I have seen it more quiet were before 4 am. The reason why it was so quiet of course was the fact that it was blowing snow and cold there. Anyway, made my way up to Dream Lake where the windtunnel was in full force. Blazed a track up the side of the hill to get to Haiyaha but after a while decided to turn around as it was just too crazy (I ended up on a very exposed edge with gale winds that were almost blowing me over) and being by myself I didn't want to risk it. So I decided to go up to Lake Emerald.


View Larger Map

Of course there the wind was howling too, but I found a relatively quiet spot where I took a composite pointing in the direction of where I knew Hallett peak was supposed to be. A small break in the clouds provided some color and I generated the above image. Unfortunately halfway through the tripod shifted in the snow and I had to reset. As it was blowing and freezing cold - too cold for my thin gloves I use while shooting - I paid far less attention to composition than I would have liked. Nevertheless I like what came out above. This image will print wall-sized easily. An image you should compare this too is one I shot from almost the same spot years ago:



In the snowy shot above I am standing more or less in front of the trees on the right hand side.

Some other pictures I did with my iPhone. I didn't use it much as you need to touch your screen with your bare fingers to take a picture.


Outerworldy glow. Somewhere slightly above Nymph lake.


Red, White, and green. The red really struck my eye coming by this. This is between Dream and Emerald lake.


Didn't make it. There are lots of beautiful gnarly trees around Emerald lake as can be seen in this older image.