I’m guessing that most landscape photographers can relate to this phenomena. You arrive at a naturally beautiful location but have difficulty conveying the location through your images. In other words, the place is just not speaking to you. Two things may occur when this happens. You end up trying really hard to photograph the location only to feel disappointment once you review your images back home. Contrary to the first approach, the second approach may be that you feel completely uninspired by the location, never take your backpack off and you leave your camera packed never to see that light of daylight at said location. Both approaches often leave you feeling frustrated, neither are right or wrong approaches.

I’m a big believer in both visiting a location without a camera when possible as well as an advocate that even if you’re feeling uninspired by a location you should take your camera out and make an attempt to photograph something. It may be difficult to do but sometimes just going through the process of examining and composing fires one’s creative juices and you will find yourself again inspired.

Gem Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park has been one of these locations for me. Gem Lake rests of a small shelf 1.7 miles from the start of the Lumpy Ridge trailhead. It’s a beautiful location in it’s own right and it’s one that many visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park will visit. Gem Lake is very close to Estes Park and the 1.7 mile hike is a fairly easy one. Guidebooks and locals will often recommend this hike to visitors because of the beauty, location and elevation that is lower than many of the other lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. I often get asked by clients if I have images of Gem Lake in my portfolio for sale, of which I did not. This is because I personally find Gem Lake a difficult location to photograph.

Earlier this week there was a nice low layer of fog hanging over Estes Park before sunrise. I decided to hike up along Lumpy Ridge to get above the fog layer and photograph Longs Peak at sunrise rising above the fog and the town of Estes. I’ve been waiting quite awhile for conditions like this and it’s a fairly uncommon occurrence to get a fog layer low enough to cover Estes Park, but not high enough to obscure Lumpy Ridge. So I was fairly excited as I took off up the trail in the fog. As I’ve written before, fog is one of my favorite conditions to photograph in, but fog is a fickle friend. Minute changes in temperature or wind can cause the fog to move or dissipate so it’s always a gamble trying to figure out where to photograph from.

More often than not fog is not going to do what you want it to do. That was the case this particular morning. By the time I was up above town, most of the fog had cleared off from west to east. Fog remained over Lake Estes and I was even able to capture some moody images of the Stanley Hotel as the fog moved eastward. Beautiful clouds hung over the divide and although I was not going to be able to photograph Longs Peak rising above the fog, I was still able to capture a beautiful sunrise, just not the one I had envisioned. The light on the peaks lasted only about 10 minutes or so before it disappeared again behind some clouds. I was about 1/2 mile from Gem Lake at this point and I decided to continue onward and hike up to Gem Lake if only for an excuse for some more exercise and time outdoors.

I arrived at Gem Lake with no intention of taking off my backpack or photographing the lake. For starters the light was fairly blasé as it was now overcast and about an hour after sunrise. Secondly I had visited Gem Lake numerous times in the past with the intention of photographing this popular location and had come away with less than inspiring results. When I arrived at the lake I did what I normally do when I’m out exploring and hiking. I sat along the shoreline, surveyed my surroundings and just enjoyed the quite and solitude.

For those that have not visited Gem Lake it’s a unique location in Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s located on the top of a shelf and surrounded by rocky walls that rise up from its sand and gravel shoreline. It has neither and inlet or outlet stream and is essentially a shallow pool of water in a sandy depression. As I sat on the shoreline relaxing I started to study the rocky walls that rise up out of Gem Lake. The striations, colorations and patterns on the rock is unique and each small section of rock had beautiful and intricate patterns. I started to see potential images everywhere and within minutes had my camera and tripod out and I was now inspired and entrenched, photographing the surface of the lake and the rocky walls that rise above its shore.

So after arriving with no intention on breaking out my camera, I was both busy photographing Gem Lake and inspired. This in a location where I had previously found little to photograph. The combination of lowered expectations combined with time spent on locations relaxing and enjoying the scene instead of trying to photograph allowed a breakthrough so to speak. I’ve experienced this many times in the past and found that being able to relax as well as releasing any preconceived notions of how the scene should look and photograph can allow for a creative breakthrough. Although it may sound somewhat corny to some, sometimes you need to let the location speak to you, not the other way around in order to truly see the beauty and uniqueness these natural places all have.

Spring keeps settling into Rocky Mountain National Park and were as we move through the first week of May. Of course that means it must be time for a winter weather advisory and some heavy snow this weekend. As I write this post it looks like Rocky Mountain National Park, especially the higher elevations above 8000 ft are looking good for some heavy snows over this Mother’s Day weekend. I’m ready for summer and while Rocky is certainly making the transition towards summer, May snowstorms are in fact, common. So with that being said, why not discuss early season wildflower opportunities in the Park.

Rocky’s climate varies tremendously and when people joke about experiencing all four seasons over the course of a few hours in Rocky they are in fact stating a real possibility. One of the things I find most interesting about Rocky Mountain National Park is not only it’s wildly changing weather and temperatures, but the flora and fauna that must endure and exist in this climate 365 days a year. Late spring tends to bring the biggest snowstorms to Rocky Mountain National Park along with some of it’s most unsettled weather. Even with the threat of large snowstorms and large temperature swings one can find some of Rocky’s early season wildflowers on display if they look closely enough.

Some of the first and hardiest bloomers in Rocky Mountain National Park are the Pasque flower and the Mountain Ball Cactus. Pasque flowers tend to be the first wildflowers to appear in Rocky Mountain National Park. Typically they can be found in shady areas at or near the base of Ponderosa pine trees. They grow in small groups and their lavender coloration is subtle and much more understated then their summer wildflower brethren. It’s easy to walk right past a Pasque flower without even noticing it’s there. Pasque flowers which are aptly known as ‘Easter Flowers’ tend to start blooming as early as late March right through April. Pasque flowers can still be found in the park though we are nearing the end of Pasque season.

Another early wildflower bloomer is one of my personal favorites, the Mountain Ball Cactus. When we think of Rocky Mountain National Park the first thing that comes to mind is cactus right?, probably not. When most of us think of Rocky Mountain National Park we think of high mountain peaks, alpine tundra, majestic lakes and snow, not so much cactus. Two forms of cactus actually exist in Rocky Mountain National Park, the first being the Prickly Pear Cactus, and the second being the Mountain Ball Cactus.

The Mountain Ball Cactus can also be found in the lower elevations on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Mountain Ball Cactus tend to bloom in late April through mid May when the cactus springs back to life after going dormant for the winter. Mountain Ball Cactus are small plants and again are fairly easy to overlook. They tend to grown on southern facing slopes and some one of the best places to find them are in Upper Beaver Meadows and along the south facing slopes of Deer Mountain. Mountain Ball Cactus blooms are small but they produce a very colorful and beautiful pink bloom.

Photographing Pasque flowers and Mountain Ball Cactus can be challenging. Many photographers will simply ignore these wildflowers, preferring to wait for the summer blooms. When photographing Mountain Ball Cactus and Pasque flowers one has to work a little harder to be creative and capture images that display these wildflowers understated beauty. Unlike the summer wildflowers, one is not going to find fields or large groupings of either of these flowers. You are also not going to be able to create classic near/far compositions of wildflowers in the foreground and mountains in the background. Photographers will need to concentrate on the flowers themselves to create compelling imagery.

I personally like to use a dedicated Macro lens to photograph these blooms. While I don’t often use a dedicated Macro lens when photographing wildflowers, I find these understated wildflowers conducive to Macro photography. Using a dedicated Macro lens in the 100mm range l allows for photographers to eliminate distraction and uninteresting portions of the scene. I like to experiment with my aperture, often using smaller f-stops and apertures to blur the background and allow the focus to be on the wildflowers themselves.

I’m not advocating using only a dedicated Macro lens to photograph these wildflowers, by all means experiment with other lenses in your kit. I am however, advocating to keep an eye out for some of the more subtle and understated beauty in Rocky Mountain National Park. Yes it’s still early in the season for wildflowers but even so there are small pockets of beauty to be found if one just takes the time to look for it.