Capping off a week of beautiful conditions and sunrises in Rocky Mountain National Park this morning. Lots of nice clouds hung over the Mummy Range and when the light finally draped Chapin,Ypsilon,Chaquita and Fairchild the landscape really came alive. Late spring conditions this week were welcome but it looks like more snow is on the way for RMNP next week. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, Nikkor 24-70mm F4 AF S lens
It’s been a great week for sunrises up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Lots of nice combinations of clouds and light around most morning in the park. With the temperatures warming, water is flowing in the lower elevations and even though we are still awhile off from summer you can feel the tide turning against winter.
This morning’s sunrise was a little more subtle that some earlier in the week. Clouds on the eastern horizon blocked the sunrise just long enough so that we did not have what would have been a very colorful sunrise. Lots of clouds hung over the Mummy Range this morning as so I decided I would hang around the Hidden Valley area to see if we would get some decent light.
The light finally lit the peaks about 25 minutes after sunrise. It was subtle but warm and the cloud cover that hung over Chaping, Ypsilon, Chaquita and Fairchild was spectacular. The willows that lined the Beaver Pond area added a great splash of color with the warm lighting.
This coming week looks very interesting. Our mild spring like days in Rocky Mountain National Park look like they will be turning back towards winter as snow is predicted for much of the back end of the week. We may not have quite as many great sunrises in RMNP next week but the chance of snow covered landscapes and mountains already has me thinking of where I’m going to be next week if the light breaks my way.
A colorful sunrise this morning over the high peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park as seen from Moraine Park today. Seeing the Big Thompson free from ice and flowing is an awesome sight. It wont be much longer until the higher lakes in RMNP start to thaw signaling the pending arrival of summer. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, Nikkor 24-70mm F4 AF-S
It was a beautiful spring morning in Rocky Mountain National Park today. The temperature was mild and our bitter nemesis the wind even laid down just before sunrise allowing the silence to reveal the chirps of birds and the howls of coyotes welcoming in the new day.
My options were limited this morning as clouds covered most of the peaks in the park just before sunrise. On mornings like these where a ‘mountain blanket’ cloud is covering most of the divide, the sunrise can be great on the continental divide but you may not see any of the snow covered peaks. I call it a ‘mountain blanket’ cloud because unlike a mountain wave cloud that forms high above the peaks, this kind of cloud essentially covers the peaks like a blanket.
Longs Peak was covered, Hallett Peak was covered, Ypsilon Mountain was mostly covered. While Stones Peak had clouds around it, it was mostly free of clouds prior to sunrise. Because of this I decided to setup at one of the iconic, oft photographed locations in Moraine Park along the Big Thompson River. This is both a beautiful spot and one in which the water is now free from ice and flowing free.
Each year when the thaw out after winter starts to set in and water becomes free of ice I get excited. Not only because of the warmer weather on its way to Rocky Mountain National Park but because moving and open water creates a dynamic scene and allows for reflections to capture the warm morning light.
More importantly its exciting to watch the thaw march upward as its starts in the lower elevations of RMNP and makes it’s way higher with each passing day. It wont be long know before some of the higher lakes start to break free from ice and start to open. Exciting times ahead for photographers and summer season approaching quickly now.
Embracing all kinds of light means its important for landscape photographers to navigate through all the different kinds of light that may fall on a landscape. Dramatic lighting on iconic scenes is awesome but learning how to photograph under more subtle lighting condtions can be just as rewarding. Sublte ligithing conditions can allow one to capture a sense of place better or to photograph locations that dont work well under more dramatic lightingn conditions. I’ve been waiting for a gray day to photograph this scene in Rocky Mountain National Park for quite awhile. Snow on the trees and willows combined with overcast lighting allowed me to bring out the blues on the pines and the reds of the willows in a more discrete fashion.Technical Details: Nikon D850, Nikkor 200-500mm F5.6 AF-S VR E lens
The trend in landscape photography has been every more dramatic, epic, and otherworldly lighting conditions. Combine this was some iconic spot and one has the formula for a Facebook post, Tweet or Instagram post to garner lots of likes or maybe even go viral. The euphoria and endorphin rush with capturing a scene under dramatic lighting combined with lots of likes and comments on social media feeds right into one’s ego and can set a photographer on a temporary feel good high.
As with both light and capturing that light with a camera and creating a photograph, these conditions and moments in time are ethereal. Both the photographer and their mostly anonymous social media fan club that liked, shared and retweeted the image, will move on to another image or shiny object.
Make no mistake about it, as a landscape photographer the condition that allows me to convey my message and portray my subjects personality and mood is the lighting. Like most other landscape photographers I strive to photograph my subjects in the most dramatic lighting conditions possible. I study the conditions, topography and subject envisioning the best conditions that will render what I perceive as a reflection of the sense of place of a given location based on what the potential lighting conditions may be. I’ll stare at a landscape and envision what it would look like wrapped in fog or lit with sun and clouds in a manner that flow with jagged peaks or deep canyons.
Even though I strive to photograph locations in dramatic lighting conditions, some of my favorite light on the landscape is still plain old diffused lighting found on cloudy, rainy and snowy days. For me, while this particular lighting is more subtle and quiet, it often allows me to photograph subjects and conditions that would not reflect the sense of place under more dramatic lighting conditions.
Earlier this week I found myself immersed one morning in cloudy overcast lighting conditions on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I headed out in Rocky this particular April morning with the hopes that we would get some breaks in the cloud cover at sunrise. Snow had been falling the night before and being as difficult as it is to capture landscape images in Rocky after snow (on account of high winds and bluebird days preceding storms), I’m always going to take my chances hoping the light breaks my way. While I’ve had more than my shares of sunrises and sunsets where this has not worked, many of my most dramatic images have happened on mornings when chances were slim anything dramatic would happen.
Well as so often happens the dramatic lighting did not come this morning. It looked good at times with breaks in the cloud cover but just as sunrise approached snow moved back in over Rocky Mountain National Park’s east side and the lighting on the landscape remained gray and diffused.
I could have packed it up and left the park. Instead I started scanning the list in my head of locations I wanted to photograph under these conditions. That list is as long or longer than the locations I want to photograph in RMNP under prime lighting conditions and sun. Instead of sulking and heading home I was excited and energized by the prospect of being able to shoot locations and subjects that I’d normal pass on.
With this in mind I headed out into Hollowell Park. Hollowell Park is a beautiful location accessed from Bear Lake Road. Great hiking trails emanate out of this small park but I would think for most landscape photographers shooting Rocky, its not high on the ‘to-do’ list as the view of the mountain peaks are not quite as sexy as they are further up Bear Lake Road.
But there is plenty to photograph in Hollowell Park, especially under gray, diffused light. Fresh snow on the landscape and snow covered pines, willows and aspens could keep me and my camera busy and clicking all morning. Even better was I had the entire area to myself that morning kept company only by a pair of ravens, the occasional mountain bluebird and a pack of coyotes.
It get’s tiring hearing many well known photographers rail against the copycat nature that seems perverse in the craft these days. Comp-stomping has become and epidemic and social media only serves to fuel this behavior. That being said, we’ve all been there at one point or another and I can still get just as excited for a dramatic sunrise at Dream Lake as I could twenty plus years ago when I first started photographing Rocky Mountain National Park.
Nowadays I get just as excited for cloudy, gray days to photograph. In fact, with 300 plus sunny days a year here on the Front Range of Colorado, getting these kinds of conditions can be difficult at times. The bottom line is that its important to embrace all kinds of light.
Enjoy and photograph dramatic lighting, but also learn to embrace and enjoy the more subtle lighting when it arrives. It will make you concentrate of both your subject, your composition and your surroundings more. I think you will also find this kind of lighting will allow you to create images that are both more original, and speak to your creative side as much or more than dramatically light iconic subjects.
Much like March, April is a topsy turvy month in Rocky Mountain National Park. Expect a little bit of everything in April as just about any kind of weather can show up, most of it likely to bring good dumps of snow. The first sunrise of April in Rocky Mountain National Park was beautiful. This old dead snag was a perfect subject to frame the color skies over the east side of the park. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, Nikkor 24-70mm AF-S lens
So long March and welcome April. As seems typical these days the months keep passing by more quickly each year. In it’s usual fashion, March did its thing. The month started out with sub-zero weather and lots of snow. March warmed up but lots of fresh snow fell during the month which bodes well for summer and fall.
April, like March often has a polarity that seems to switch and change at a whim. Warm spring days, grasses starting to green and Pasque flowers blooming under the Ponderosa forests at lower elevations of Rocky Mountain National Park can quickly be disrupted by large and powerful spring snowstorms. April means be ready for pretty much anything and everything.
The first day of April in Rocky Mountain National Park dawned in true April fashion. A mild morning quickly saw the winds pick up and snow squalls cover over the high peaks of RMNP and the continental divide. The skies east of the divide however, exploded with color as the sun rose to welcome the new month.
With the continental divide covered and most of the streams and waterways still frozen or mostly frozen, I headed to this long dead tree to frame the colorful skies. Rocky did not play and April Fools joke on me and lets hope this is a harbinger or things to come in RMNP the rest of the month of April.
Sunrise over the Mummy Range last week as our most recent storm moved out of the state of Colorado. A powerful low pressure system dropped well over a foot of snow on Rocky Mountain National Park. As is typical of snowfalls in Rocky, the high winds quickly removed most of the snow from the pines but still left a beautiful late winter scene to photograph. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, 24-70mm F4 S lens
If you have been watching the national news of late, you’ve probably seen videos of all the snow, avalanches and other weather we’ve been having here in Colorado. While the news stations tend to embellish situations a bit, this winter has been a very active one both for the entire state of Colorado as well as Rocky Mountain National Park.
Just last week Rocky Mountain National Park and the Front Range of Colorado were hit by a very strong late winter storm that dumped lots more snow on the peaks while also being aided with extremely strong winds as well as the lowest recorded measurement of SLP in Colorado at 970.4 MB’s.
Rocky did not get the hurricane like winds that many experienced in the Denver metro area but they did get the snow with very strong winds with well over a foot of new snow falling on an above already above average snowpack.
This latest storm pushed the Colorado River basin snowpack on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park up over 140% while the South Platte drainage on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park currently stands at 136% of normal.
What does this all mean for current and future conditions for photography in Rocky?. For one thing it means I certainly expect there to be lots of snow still hanging around early into the summer season. Higher elevations of Rocky are going to see lakes taking longer to thaw and trails still partially covered with snow into at least mid June and possibly even early July. Streams and waterfalls will be flowing hard as the snowmelt begins to take hold later this spring.
I would expect lots of green as temperatures warm as well as wildflowers. In fact, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we have a great wildflower season in Rocky starting in the lower elevations in June and moving to the higher elevations of the park in July and early August as I hope we reap the benefits of all the snow that has fallen in Rocky Mountain National Park and the mountains of Colorado this season.
As for the current conditions in Rocky expect to see lots of snow, mostly frozen bodies of water including streams and lakes and trails still packed with snow requiring traction, skis or snowshoes. It’s still March so expect lots more snow to fall in the next thirty days but one can also expect the snow to melt quickly as both the sun and temperatures continue to increase quickly as we move towards summer.
So to summarize what one should expect the next few weeks in Rocky, lots more of the same.
2019 has started off with uncertainty. Currently Rocky Mountain National Park has limited access due to our current government shutdown. We are all hoping for the situation to resolove itself sooner than later but trying to guess when that will be is difficult. Currently, I’ve been spending lots of time in and around Boulder, Colorado photographing the landscape down here and getting out as much as I can. This is a view of the Flatirons from the Doudy Draw area last week looking back towards South Boulder Peak and Bear Mountain. Technical Details: Nikon Z7, 24-70mm F4 S lens
I apologize for the lack of blog posts lately. After wrapping up a very busy 2018 year of guiding and tours in Rocky Mountain National Park, I took a brief hiatus only to have the latest government shutdown make access to Rocky Mountain National Park difficult. As a reminder you can always check my Twitter or Facebook feeds that are linked at the bottom of this page as I post to them at least a few times a week if not more.
While you can technically walk into Rocky as of right now, services are limited and getting into most areas of the park is fairly difficult. Furthermore, most of the better locations for winter photography would require quite a commitment to get to without the ability to drive to a trailhead.
As of writing this it’s difficult to tell when the current government shut down may actually end as we have just past the 23rd day of the shutdown. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for all involved that a resolution can be found sooner than later and we can get back to Rocky Mountain National Park operating as is normal once again.
While we wait out the shutdown, I’ve been keeping myself busy photographing in and around the Boulder area. Not only is this area my second favorite place to photograph after Rocky Mountain National Park, but I’m thankful I have a fallback that allows me the ability to get out and keep productive while the machinations of our current political climate grind away.
I’ll again be offering photography tours in Rocky Mountain National Park for the 2019 season. If you are interested in heading out with me feel free to drop me an email and I’ll be more than happy to discuss dates, locations and times with you.
Until we get some more clarity here, I’ll be out traversing the landscape and open space properties in and around Boulder and will try to make a few expeditions into Rocky because I miss getting out and exploring the park as much as you all do. Stay tuned for lots of posts and images as 2019 unfolds here.
Autumn has arrived in Rocky Mountain National Park. At this point it appears we are going to be a little ahead of schedule on the turning of the leaves. I photographed these aspens at peak along the Bierstadt Moraine last week. Many areas of Rocky Mountain National Park are at peak or quickly nearing peak. Technical Details: Nikon D850, Nikkor 16-35mm F4 AF-VR lens
Just wanted to give my readers a quick update on the current fall color situation in Rocky Mountain National Park as I’ve been questions daily on how things look. What I will say in a broad generalization is the following based on my observations being out in the field everyday the past week.
I believe we are running five to seven days ahead of what the normal timing is for fall color in RMNP. Whether this is because of a warm and dry summer, or because of all the smoke and haze over the park much of the late summer triggering the plants in to thinking there is less sunlight I’m not sure. At this point what seems obvious is that we are certainly running ahead of schedule and that the warm and very windy week we just had is not helping in extending fall color any.
First things first, the autumn color in Rocky Mountain National Park is nearing or just past peak in many areas now. Bear Lake was at peak on Friday, September 14th I would say. This is about 5 days earlier then when peak typically occurs at Bear Lake. While the leaves are at peak, the winds have done a number on many of the aspen trees around Bear Lake. You will stay be able to photograph fall color this week at Bear Lake but its going to be slightly past peak and depending on how strong the winds are, there may not be much left by the end of the week.
The Bierstadt Moraine is currently about 50-60% turned. Many of the trees are showing the stress from the drier summer and while there are nice patches of yellow and orange, there are also some areas that have just turned brown. This week, Bierstadt might be one’s best overall location for autumn color.
As for other areas of Rocky, I would say the mid level elevations will be at peak this week with the lower levels starting to show decent color in the ground cover as well as some of the trees. The Boulder Brook area of the park is only about half turned and should be good over the next week or more as this area does well even after the leaves have fallen as they cover the forest floor.
The elk rut is also well underway and if your timing is good you should be able to find some good groups of bull’s with their harems in Moraine, Horseshoe and the Kawunneche Valley. I do think the warm weather has caused the rutting activity to slow quickly after sunrise and I would also say I’m still observing a fair amount of elk activity in higher elevations of the park stll.
Now is really a great time to get out in Rocky and take advantage of the fall color and autumn elk rut. I think overall color this year is going to be on the fair to marginal side but there is plenty of opportunities to find subjects to photograph if you look. At the current pace, I would expect most fall color in Rocky Mountain National Park to be well past peak by the first week of October.
It’s mornings like this one from today in Rocky Mountain National Park that keep me motivated. I may not always have something deep to say about each image but my love of Rocky Mountain National Park and wild places is what keeps me heading out regardless of the times or conditions. Technical Details: Nikon D850, Tamron 100-400mm F 4.5-6.3 DI VC lens
I get asked often what motivates me to get up five, six or seven days a week to head out at an ungodly hour of the morning for most people and head out into nature ready photograph whatever is in store that particular day. It’s a good question without an easy answer.
Head over to social media, podcasts or other photographers blog and this subject comes up often with some photographers while others never discuss it at all. Some photographers feel strongly that if your motivations behind your photography and the reasons you connect with nature and discussed openly than you are discrediting your imagery and craft. While sharing your images with other is important too many that is not enough.
Photographers on the opposite side of the argument may feel the need to share and detail all their personal feelings and motivations each time the create and share and image is necessary. In the modern age of ever shrinking privacy and autonomy, sharing one’s personal feelings, beliefs and motivations each day beyond the image itself may not only make them uncomfortable but may leave them feeling narcissistic and overly self important.
Where do I fall in the discussion? Not to be a cop-out but I would say I fall somewhere in the middle. We as nature and landscape photographers get to witness untold beauty on an almost daily basis. For many the beauty of the light, landscape, journey and discovery is what drives and motivates us to keep returning and communing with the landscape and light. This certainly motivates me but so does the entire process motivate me.
I enjoy waking early long before most. I take great satisfaction in working out after I wake so that I can stay trail ready whether I’m hiking or not. I taking the dog on a walk in the neighborhood at 2:30 AM so I can survey the sky and conditions before I drive to my location. I love my hour long drive from my home in Erie up to Estes Park in the dead of night so I can think quietly, listen to bad music or have long conversations with myself about who knows what. Most importantly I love that I have the freedom to do not only what I love doing, but have locations such as Rocky Mountain National Park that have been preserved, protected and kept open to the public so that I can for the most part, still freely access large swaths of wilderness. Lastly and most importantly I enjoy the entire process. From start to finish each day each step along the way exciting or boring I enjoy. The minute I stop enjoying the entire process is the minute I stop taking photos. I doubt many other photographers would find my routine and process enjoyable like I do.
With that said, some days I’m motivated to write something thoughtful and engaging, and other days I may feel the image stands alone with little need or desire to delve deeper on sharing the personal intricacies that go into my love and motivation behind my craft.
In the world of art there is certainly not a need to conform to what others are doing. In fact conformity is looked down upon and discouraged. No two artists or photographers will travel the same paths nor will they ever arrive at the same destination. We should not only appreciate the difference between individuals, but embrace it.
Being original should be a goal, but it should not be the be the only goal. The goal should be staying true to yourself but remembering to enjoy and love both the experience and process while championing in a responsible manner the subjects you photograph.
As a final thought on motivation, I see many photographers today railing about photographing original compositions and shooting locations or subjects that are rarely photographed. When posting their original composition they often choose to preface it with a quote from an author or historical figure. It’s probably a quote you’ve seen many times before on the internet, in books, calendars and other forms of media. I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for these quotes and often find them interesting and amusing. But in the interest of originality, is it ok to post a never before photographed composition while recycling somebody else’s writing? If we are going to tout the importance of originality shouldn’t the quote used to describe the photograph be held to the same standard as the image and also be original?. Just a thought.
Sometimes just staying put in one location is your best bet. I almost bailed this morning on Rocky Mountain National Park in an attempt to get to the right altitude so I could take advantage of the inversion or fog layer that had formed east of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. I stayed put and ended up near Many Parks. Cant say I have any complaints of this sunrise view of McGregor Mountain, Lumpy Ridge and a fogged in Horseshoe Park. Technical Details: Nikon D850, Nikkor 24-70mm F2.8 ED AF lens
Today was one of those mornings that when I wake up I’m not sure where I’m going to photograph or what the conditions are going to be like. I have a pretty standard routine each morning before I head out the door and into the field. I spend about an hour working out and then it’s time to walk my dog.
Not only are both of these activities beneficial for photography, but walking Jackson long before sunrise gives me time to survey the conditions before heading out. Sleeping in sounds great and all but honestly I don’t enjoy waking up and just heading out in the dark thinking I know what the conditions will be like. Getting a little time outside to survey the clouds and the conditions has saved my bacon a few times. Sometimes I think I know where the best light is going to be in the morning only to head out with the dog and then change my plans based on what I’m seeing.
I wont be able to get up to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow morning so I was pretty intent on heading back up to the park this morning regardless of the conditions. That being said while out with the dog I could see that the skies down here near Boulder were pretty clear. There were signs of some clouds or fog north of me towards Longmont. This intrigued me a bit because with the cold temperatures and fog to the north it appeared and inversion or fog layer was going to setup somewhere.
The trick with these inversion or fog layers is guessing at what elevation they are going to stop at. Photographing in the fog is great, but getting above the inversion layer is even better. Problem is thats not always easy, especially in the winter with most of the high roads like Trail Ridge Road closed for the season.
Back to my office before heading out for one last look at the various web cams I check out as well as my favorite weather site. The Estes Park web cams revealed that it was snowing in both Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. This sealed it for me. Clear skies or snowy landscapes?. I figured I take the snow landscapes and maybe get lucky if the clouds and fog layer I saw to the north somehow made it up to the park.
When I arrived in Rocky Mountain National Park I headed to my spot just inside the entrance that I like to stop out to check out the situation for the morning. I could see the fog layer had now built considerably but was still east of Estes Park and likely halted somewhere in the 6000 ft elevation range. In my head I was thinking sticking lower down in the foothills outside of Boulder might be the best. Still I had a nagging feeling that I should stick around Rocky and see if the inversion kept moving up the hill. It’s easy to want to go for what you think is the safe bet, but it also pays sometimes to just pick a spot and stick with it.
This morning sticking with Rocky paid off in spades. About 45 minutes before sunrise I could see the inversion layers had started to make its way into Rocky Mountain National Park and into Moraine Park. At this point I decided to head up to Many Parks Curve to see if I could stay ahead and above the inversion. Thankfully, the inversion layer made it to a level just below Many Parks Curve. With the high peaks covered in clouds and snow, Many Parks Curve was the place to be at this morning in Rocky.
We’ve made it through another fast paced but beautiful autumn season here in Rocky Mountain National Park. Fall color and autumn are quickly making their exit from Rocky but the past fall season while beautiful, varied and always too short has given photographers lots of great opportunities. While the overall color this year was average at best, the weather conditions in the park during the fall season made for some spectacular shooting conditions for photographers. Scenes like this one of snow and autumn aspen trees in Horseshoe Park were common as snow graced the park often this fall. Technical Details: Nikon D850, Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 ED AF VR FL lens
Autumn in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of my favorite times of year. I look forward to the fall season in Rocky all year only to find it both arrives and departs much more quickly than I am ever comfortable with. It’s a spectacular time of year to visit RMNP and its also and amazing time of year to photograph the park. The autumn hues, golden aspens and elk rut make it a very popular place to be once mid September rolls around. Even with autumn being one of my most favorite times of year to get out in the field, the harried pace of the season in Rocky can make the autumn seem like a blur.
No two fall seasons in Rocky are ever alike. The colors are different each year, the location of the best and most vibrant color are different each year, the timing of peak colors in areas of the park are different each year and the total duration of the autumn season is different each year. Some autumn seasons linger on and on with little to no early season snow or windstorms to expedite the end of autumn.
Some years it’s just the opposite. For one reason or another the fall color may never really pop. Snow and high winds may also rake across the park quickly stripping the trees of their leaves as well as making access to locations more difficult. As is always the case when dealing with mother nature, you just don’t know and there’s not much you can do even if you do know.
This makes it important to take advantage of the conditions whenever they are favorable. If there is one thing I’ve learned in photographing fall in Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park it’s get the shot while you can. Waiting for better conditions or planning on coming back at a later date is often a fools folly. I’ve personally missed a few opportunities thinking I’ll come back to a location a little later only to have wind, snow or weather decide otherwise.
Autumn season is Rocky has pretty much wrapped up for the year. We’ve had a very dynamic fall season in RMNP and one that offered many great opportunities for photographers even if I would rate the color this season as average to below average. Weather was the story this season along with snow dropped on the park almost once a week since the colors began changing. While the snow and cool autumn hampered some of the fall color, it did allow for some really neat opportunities to photograph the clash of the seasons.
Overall the season was both short and awesome. The frenetic pace of autumn and the need to maximize your time in the field with your subjects while the getting was good takes precedent over sleep, rest and contemplation. Now with the season waining the pace can slow and we can begin looking forward to winter in Rocky Mountain National Park.
