Well its happening. Summer is quickly transitioning into autumn in Rocky Mountain National Park. While the fall is my favorite season in RMNP, with over 23 years of photographing the fall color in Rocky behind me, I’m always sort of shocked out how quickly we transition from summer to fall in the park.

Autumn in Rocky Mountain National Park is sly. It slides in slowly, covertly than all at once. Subtle color changes in the grasses and underbrush portend to the looming changes in weather and seasons and then just like that, were full on with the fall season here in Colorado.

It’s been and incredibly challenging year for photography in Rocky. We’ve had smoke and poor air quality nearly from the get go of summer. Smoke settled in over the park in early June and with a few short durations, it’s remained entrenched over RMNP. Top that off with a very placid weather pattern and weak monsoonal impulse most of the summer and we have had lots of warm, clear mornings and evenings in Rocky. Great for hiking and camping, not so great for us photographers yearning for dramatic light and weather.

With that said, fall always brings a newfound enthusiasm for photographers in RMNP. The season is short and we want to take advantage of as much of its gifts and bounty as possible before the abrupt and crashing decent into winter.

I’ll try my best to keep the blog updated as we move into fall. I can tell you the elk rut is starting in earnest and they herds have begun moving towards the lower elevations. The bull’s are active and bugling and there are already lots of opportunities to photograph the rut if you happen to be in the right location.

A few aspen trees here and there are starting to turn golden and I would expect by next week some of our traditional early turning areas (west side of the park) will be looking decent. As always, keep and eye out for the smaller details as much of the autumn color in RMNP will be in the subtle nooks and crannies of the park before unveiling their full autumn splendor.

Regardless, even after a difficult summer of photography in the park, the oncoming fall season in Rocky Mountain National Park has renewed my vigor and has me excited for the great potential and beauty each fall season holds in Rocky.

One of the things I love most about spending so much time in Rocky Mountain National Park is that no matter how many times I visit, I always see, find or experience something completely new. It’s why my mantra has always been you just have to be out in the park as much as you can be as a photographer. No matter what you think you may see, or how you believe the conditions or atmospherics will unfold, you will likely be off the mark.

Being wrong can lead to being pleasantly surprised as long as you just remember to keep pushing, keep heading out even when it looks like things wont break like you want. Earlier in the week I had another experience that just reinforces the need to ‘get out there’.

Winter just wont give up the ghost this season, and earlier in the week the park had snow dumped on it from another late spring barnstormer. While I’m looking forward to warmer days and summertime conditions in RMNP, I cant ever pass up the opportunity to photography Rocky when its covered in the white stuff.

With this latest storm clearing, I headed up to the park hoping to catch something good. I had another photographer friend in town who wanted to get out to shoot, and to be honest if he had not been in town I may have passed on heading out this particular morning as it looked like the clouds and storm would have cleared out.

When I got into to Rocky and performed my usual due diligence, things did indeed look less than promising. While the trees and landscape were covered with beautiful, paste like spring snow, the skies were pretty much clear. There was some fog around Lake Estes and Lumpy Ridge and I thought that might make for an interesting opportunity, I noticed Moraine Park appeared to have a low hanging layer of ground fog over the Big Thompson River.

My buddy Robert and I decided we would hang in Moraine Park and hopefully the ground fog would stick around and give us some decent atmospherics to photograph with all the fresh snow. As luck would have it, the ground fog did stick around long enough to make for some nice landscapes. Even better, Longs Peak had a string of clouds trailing over the top of it adding a little excitement.

After capturing a nice image of Longs Peak covered in fresh snow with ground fog settling just below the south lateral moraine in Moraine Park, I was feeling pretty good when out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the snow moving along the banks of the Big Thompson down below me.

Doing a quick double take, I realized that the snow was not indeed moving but that a pod of American White Pelicans had hunkered down along the banks of the Big Thompson to wait out this latest storm before heading east, down towards the plains. While I’ve seen pelicans on Lake Estes and Grand Lake, I cant recall ever seeing them in Rocky proper before.

Getting over the initial excitement of seeing this pod of pelicans in Moraine Park, I was able to get some nice shots of the birds as they started moving around and coming to life. On top of finding the birds, the snow covered landscape and ground fog clearing only made for an even more amazing experience this morning in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Once again, my well worn mantra of ‘just go’ let me experience something new and exciting I had not expected to see and photograph. Who knows if photographing White Pelicans along the banks of the Big Thompson will be the highlight of this spring, but I’ll certainly be spending as much time as I can hoping to have more of just these kind of mornings in RMNP.

Rocky is finally opening back up and while things are much different this year in the park due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is finally a tinge of normalcy that appears to be settling into the park.

Crowds and visitors are smaller than a typical year, but I’ve been surprised by the volume of visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park even with the timed entry permit system in effect. To me, people are looking forward to getting back out into nature and returning to normalcy after a long period of stay at home orders throughout the United States this past spring.

Not all of Rocky Mountain National Park is currently open. The National Park Service is dealing with staffing issues as many of the seasonal workers they come to count on each summer season have opted to remain in their home states and towns. For example, the Wild Basin section of the park still remains closed with no known date of reopening at this point. Trail Ridge Road was closed all week after another June snowstorm dumped a half of foot of snow on the road earlier in the week. Old Fall River Road remains closed as it traditionally does until July and the park service is working on making an attempt to open the road sometime this summer.

For us photographers who love visiting Rocky Mountain National Park it just feels great to be able to get back out into Rocky and soak in all the beauty and opportunities the park presents for landscape and wildlife photographers. It’s a great time to work those legs out on the trail and to shake the rust of your cameras. Here’s a couple of suggestions for subjects and locations to currently photography in Rocky Mountain National Park.

1. As always the landscapes of Rocky Mountain National Park are a personal favorite of mine as well as many other visitors and photographers. Lots of traditional summer locations are now moving into prime season for photography. While there is still some snow on the trails in the Glacier Gorge and Bear Lake areas, lakes are free of ice below 11,000 ft and travel is for the most part summer like. Lower elevations in the 9000-10,000 ft ranges are coming are rounding into form and grasses lining lakes are greening up and wildflowers such as Wild Iris and Golden Banner are flourishing.

2. The west side of Rocky is also starting to look great again. The Kawuneeche Valley is nice and green right now and as always Moose are plentiful anywhere in the valley. Best time to spot Moose in Rocky Mountain National Park is always at dawn or dusk. Look for them grazing in the willows along the Colorado River. For landscapes on the west side of the park, look for lots of opportunities with water as the Colorado River is currently running over its bank in many areas and flooding low lying areas with water.

3. Babies!. Lots of new life to be found everywhere in the park right now. Elk are still dropping calves and if you are lucky enough to stumble on a group of females and sub adults you will see plenty of newly born elk taking in their new surroundings. Moose have new babies with them as well now and Marmots and many of the cavity nesting birds in Rocky Mountain National Park also have newborns they are attending to. While its fun to photograph the little ones its extremely important that you give these creatures space for both their well being and your safety. Animals such as Elk and Moose are extremely protective of their young. Birds can become extremely stressed by your presence near a nest so be aware and limit your time spent with any of these creatures. From first hand experience, I can tell you one experience you dont want to have is to be caught out on a trail with a female elk protecting her calf.

So things are different in Rocky right now then they have been during past summers. That being said, the sense of normalcy that nature and these sacred places provide will endure over whatever turmoil is enveloping our human world. It’s time to get out and visit some old friends again.

While my primary focus photographically speaking is landscape photography, those who know me and have photographed with me also know I’m apt to photograph just about any subject in good light. Next to landscape photography, wildlife photography ranks second in subjects I enjoy photographing.

Sometimes landscape photography and wildlife photography work hand in hand and one can benefit from the other. There are times when I’m out in a meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park setup for a sunrise image, when a large bull moose wanders out of the woods, undisturbed by my presence. In cases like these, I’m usually able to parlay my fortune into photographing both a landscape image, while I also being able to photograph wildlife that’s in the general vicinity.

Personally, I find those kinds of situation to be more of the exception than the rule. More often than not I find that to make compelling images, one has to commit the time to one or the other subject or you end up with mediocre images or no images at all. That being said, I believe its beneficial when photographing in a location like Rocky Mountain National Park to be prepared to photograph both landscapes, while having the ability to photograph wildlife which you may encounter trailside or roadside.

With the exception of portions of the fall elk rut, I typically prioritize photographing landscapes over photographing wildlife. As is often the case with both forms of photography, mother nature does not always want to cooperate and it’s easy to head home empty handed in those situations.

The upside of photographing both landscapes and wildlife photography in locations such as Rocky Mountain National Park is that there is also a good chance you will be able to capture some beautiful images of one of the two subjects.

Many days in the field I am able to capture stunning landscapes, draped in dramatic lighting. More than likely on these mornings I’ve only caught a glimpse of animals here and there and probably haven’t had an opportunity to photograph any of them. On the flip-side, many times I’ve gone out with the intention to photograph landscapes, only to have the conditions not work in my favor. It’s at this point that I start looking for other photographic opportunities in RMNP.

This was exactly the scenario that unfolded on yesterday mornings outing. Rocky was covered in fresh snow and there were lots of clouds hovering over the Front Range as I left my house and headed towards Estes Park. Forecasts called for some clearing and it looked like we would have a good probability of a dramatic sunrise.

Sunrise came and went and clouds over the eastern plains of Colorado, blocked out any dramatic color in the sky, along with any sun for the first 45 minutes of the morning. On mornings like these, I’m going to stick around and look for other subjects such as wildlife to photograph. In mid December the low angle sun provides beautiful lighting nearly all day long and of course having a fresh coat of snow on the ground in winter is always welcome.

As can often be the case, a herd of Mule Deer were grazing near the roadside at the base of aptly names Deer Mountain. With the Mule Deer rut winding down, there were three good looking bucks just east of the grazing herd of ‘Muley’s’. One buck in particular took his time grazing and spent most of his time basking in the warm morning sun on a 4 degree Fahrenheit morning.

I always welcome these opportunities and they make for a good ‘Plan B’ if your primary subject is not cooperating. I find it to be a good idea when driving or hiking the roads of Rocky Mountain National Park to keep a camera with a long lens at the ready for opportunities like this. Have the camera setup for action, and have a lens that can give you some reach. Your vehicle makes a great blind and oftentimes, if you a prepared you can get a few minutes with your subject and capture some nice images as I was able to do yesterday.