Old Man and the mountain

Old man of the mountain flowers blooming at the shores of Andrews Tarn below Andrews Glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park. I visited this place after my visit to Sky Pond and Lake of Glass for sunrise. The mosquitoes were amazingly thick this morning and they were not impressed by the bug spray I was using ;-).

Old Man. Bigger. Flickr. Facebook. G+
Nikon D600, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/22, 1/60s, ISO 100, handheld.

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.

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.

Mills Lake sunset

I went to catch the sunset at Mills Lake with my daughter a few weeks ago. Haven't had time since then to post the pictures here.

Sunset at Mills Lake. Buy a print. Also see this image on flickr. Facebook.
High resolution composite from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 32mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 200

Mills Lake horizontal. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 32mm, f/16, 1/6s, ISO 200

More later.

hiding images

Some images I found hiding in my library from Summit Lake on Mount Evans.

King's crown. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 9 shots. Individual shots: Nikon D300. Nikkor 18-55mm at 34 mm, f/16, 5.0s, ISO 200.

Shroud. Buy a print.
High resolution composite from 12 shots. Individual shots: Nikon D300. Nikkor 18-55mm at 35 mm, f/16, 10.0s, ISO 200.

Emerald Lake reprise

I went up to Emerald Lake in RMNP yesterday evening with my daughter. Even though this place is a traditional sunrise setting, I know from the geography of this place that in midsummer, it should work as a sunset too. Hallett peak and the ridge to the left should be lit by the setting sun and could create a nice band of light especially when it is cloudy at the same time. This evening looked promising but unfortunately, as happened many times before, the clouds were just too thick for any color. On top of that it started pouring right at sunset and didn't let up the whole time walking down to the car. Still had a great time. I did create the below panorama that I still liked.


Rainy Emerald Evening. Buy a print. See on flickr. See on G+. Large on smugmug.
Stitched from 7 images. Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 at f/16, 1/10s, ISO 400 (forgot to change it ;-) ).

Rocks and reflections in Summit Lake

This was taken a while ago at Summit Lake below Mount Evans. I shot much more the other way too, but right now I just wanted to show this image.


Summit Lake rocks and Mount Warren. Buy a print.
Technical data: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, ISO 200, f/8.0, 30s, circular polarizer.

Same image on flickr.
Google+ post.

Marigold Pond Evening Stillness

I went to RMNP yesterday evening ostensibly to photograph fall colors, but ended up scouting out the trail to Two Rivers lake and Lake Helene as I just felt like hiking and escaping the throngs and throngs of people that were in the park gawking at Elk and leaves. That turned out to be a good choice as I met only a couple of hikers and had the place to myself. This area has several traditional sunrise pictures and has been on my wish list for a while. On the other hand, I have never seen an image of it in the evening. This makes sense as the light comes from behind then and you don't get the nice glow on Notchtop mountain which is what people go for. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons I did not make it for sunrise but the evening turned out to be very nice too. The water in the lakes was the most still I have ever seen it anywhere in RMNP ever. Below is an image that will be followed by more from different lakes and areas around the trail.


Marigold Pond evening stillness. Buy a print.
Technical data: D300, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11mm, f/11, 1/4sec, ISO 200, polarizer to emphasize reflection and 2 stop grad ND. Image interpreted in Lightroom.
Google+ post. On flickr.

Amazing sunrise on Sprague Lake

The following images are from a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park back in January. I was planning to hike up to one of the high mountain lakes from Bear Lake trailhead, but when I got to the trailhead early before sunrise it was blowing snow really hard up there and was dastardly cold. Not conditions in which you want to hike for a few hours and not get anything worthwhile. I waited for an hour or so drinking my coffee and eating some sandwiches to see whether the weather would let up. But it didn't and I decided to go back down. The clouds that the snow was dumping out were really only hanging on the peaks around the basin and going down I noticed that it was relatively clear around Sprague lake. Sprague Lake is a popular very short trail that you can hike around with kids and be back before the whining starts. In winter it offers nice views of the basin. I hiked up the lake and found a great position and some interesting structures in the snow and the sunrise was spectacular. These images are taken away from the basin that kept being shrouded in clouds.


Symmetry. Buy a print. Also on flickr.
Assembled from 9 images (3 rows of 3) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s


The wave. Horizontal crop of the above image. Buy a print.


Blobs. Buy a print.
Assembled from 9 images (3 rows of 3) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s


Red dawn. A little later the colors changed. Buy a print.
Assembled from 10 images (2 rows of 5) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s.

It was incredibly cold standing there in the blowing wind over the ice but undoubtedly better than up higher.

More from Emerald Lake

Going through my Lightroom library I was struck by another image from Emerald Lake. I worked it up and put it on my site. Enjoy!

Extreme white balance

I encountered a situation yesterday evening where I was photographing in a snowstorm at dusk. I did not realize this at the time, but the light was so filtered that the camera registered basically purely blue, while our eyes saw everything as just grey even with some orange tinting. This is what the camera thought a scene should look like:



Completely blue indeed. It thought the white balance was basically similar to daylight. If you do "auto white balance" in Lightroom, this is what it looks like:



Lightroom chose 2850K, which is completely wrong. You would think that with all these clouds perhaps shade is correct:



Much better indeed but still way too blue. To get neutral color, I had to dial the white balance to 11:



Basically at the limit of what Lightroom allows, and this is the result.



Very close to what it looked like. It turns out that you can encounter natural conditions where you have to max out Lightroom's slider to get correct color. I even had some photos shot there that maxed out the slider!

For some more photos of this place, see my flickr set on this place.