I’ve been back on the east coast for the past week helping my 78 year old mother who had a fall early last week and injured herself. While its been great getting to spend a lot of time with mom, watching her lose her mobility and independence is difficult. So for the past week I’ve been helping getting my mom settled and have not been able to spend most mornings up in Rocky photographing from some spectacular vantage point.

You realize quickly how much of ones daily routine is taken for granted. Much of this routine that makes up one’s day seems to happen as involuntarily as a heartbeat. You go about your routines until something disrupts them.

The question then becomes how do you adjust when your routine is disrupted?. Obviously this is a good question to ponder when thinking about one’s daily routines, but it also is something I’ve thought about quite a bit as a landscape photographer.

I’m a creature of habit. I LOVE my routines. They help me achieve my goals, keeps me stable and has allowed me to create and expand my photography portfolio by embracing and enjoying the entire process of landscape photography. I enjoy every part that goes into working as a landscape photographer, much of which many might fight mundane.

I enjoy waking up at 12:30 AM in the summer to start my day so I can be tarn side as the sun rises over the mountain peak. Working out before leaving for the park is something I look forward to each night before going to bed. Many of these routines make my wife think I’m crazy but embracing the process and creating routines have allowed me to consistently create new work by allowing me to consistently make time to be out in the field behind the camera.

Watching my mom struggle this week has really helped to reinforce who much I enjoy my routines but even more importantly value independence. I’m always attempting to be more mindful, but it’s even more important to value every opportunity one has. When it comes to photographing Rocky Mountain National Park, I’m lucky enough to get many opportunities. What I’m still learning each day is just how important it is to value and embrace and be thankful for each one of them. It may be routine for me to photograph Rocky, but its certainly not a given.

Spend more than a few days in Rocky Mountain National Park and you will certainly meet our good friend the wind. Wind comes with the territory here in Colorado and the higher you venture in the park the more intense it is.

Wind is common in early spring as fronts move through the state. For the most part wind makes photography in RMNP very challenging. A tripod, high shutter speed and lots of might help to allow for a few sharp frames in between the gusts that can be hurricane force on some mornings. As much of a nuisance that wind can be in Rocky Mountain National Park it can also be accompanied by some dramatic clouds and light.

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those kinds of mornings where there were lots of nice clouds hanging over Rocky, mostly on account of the wind stirring up the atmosphere. I’m always a bit reluctant on these windy days to go out and shoot. The lighting may be great but nothing is worse than finding all or nearly all of your images suffer from motion blur on account of the wind. That being said photographing in the wind in Rocky comes with the territory and if you want to spend time photographing RMNP you will have to deal with it one way or another.

My strategy on windy days is to find areas that have some shelter from the wind. Often this means stick to the lower elevations of the park as the winds tend to be more moderate and there are often groves of trees or rocks one can use to shield the wind.

With the wind howling in the park and gusts near 30 MPH I settled on Upper Beaver Meadows to setup. Lots of trees to duck behind and Otis, Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain had some amazing wind driven clouds streaking over them.

With about a 15% success rate as far as sharp images go I did manage enough sharp frames to make the morning worthwhile. Overall the wind was a pain but the lighting and clouds on the divide were more than worth the temporary nuisance that accompanied the wind on this beautiful morning.

New new image from this morning from Rocky. ‘Big Bertha’ aka my truck is in the shop getting a new fuel pump so I’m stuck here in the office for a few days watching sunrise through the Estes Park web cams. I figured its better to take care of that whining fuel pump now then up stuck somewhere or losing ‘Bertha’ for a few days during prime summer photography and photo tour season in Rocky Mountain National Park.

With another April blizzard up us what better time to drop off the truck for a few days and to attend some administrative work while the rain, snow and wind make photography difficult.

I did manage to get out yesterday morning before dropping the truck off at the shop. Sunrise looked promising the night before so I made sure to schedule the drop off on Tuesday. I figured with all the nasty weather moving through state it may be a few days before things get interesting again in Rocky for us photographers.

In typical Colorado spring fashion it was about 80 degrees here in the Denver area yesterday. Today it’s raining and snowing and temps are in the high 30’s. For the most part if we have warmer than average temperatures here on the east side of Colorado’s Front Range it means Rocky Mountain National Park is going to be windy due to westerly or down-sloping winds. This also usually means that higher level lenticular clouds may form just east of the mountain peaks.

That was the case yesterday morning in RMNP. Lots of great clouds in the sky to the east and a nice small break on the eastern horizon to illuminate the skies and mountain peaks for a short amount of time at sunrise.

I focused myself on the Mummy Range as that looked like it would have the most color based on the clouds I could observe before sunrise. Also due to the fact that it was very windy in Estes Park, I figured heading high up Bear Lake Road would just result in lots blurry images for a wind blown camera.

The Mummy Range turned out to have some very nice color though just to the east and south of Rocky the skies really popped. While my main composition was of Ypsilon, and Fairchild I did take advantage of the beautiful color over Mummy Mountain. Because of the orientation of Mummy Mountain its one of the more difficult peaks to photograph in Rocky as it often does not have direct lighting and is in the shadow of other peaks. The orange and red skies over it yesterday worked well to highlight this awesome piece of granite.

Hopefully by the end of the week I have both my truck back and we are able to capture some post snow images. Winds will remain high in RMNP through the middle of the week so its likely much of the snow will be blown off the pines as is often the case. Regardless, I’m looking forward to getting ‘Big Bertha’ back as well as getting back out into the field after this latest storm moves eastward.

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.

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.