It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for photography in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a record warm and dry winter season, wildfire season has arrived in Colorado and across the Intermountain west. With multiple large wildfires burning in both Colorado and Utah, wildfire smoke across the Front Range of Colorado had been a heavy presence the past few weeks.

The wildfire smoke was thick enough that it was often difficult to see the mountains from the Denver metro area. Depending on the day, there were times in Rocky Mountain National Park where it was difficult to see more than just outlines of iconic peaks such as Longs or Hallett’s from even a few miles away. For the most part, the wildfire smoke that enveloped Rocky Mountain National Park turned the landscape flat, dull, and a grayish green that made it almost appear lifeless. Obviously for landscape photographers, shooting in these conditions is near impossible with a few exceptions.

Because the smoke wasn’t going anywhere at the onset of wildfire season, one can attempt to make due with the conditions and have them work for them. That can be difficult as some days the smoke was just to thick to make almost anything work other than waterfalls and features. A few mornings however, the opacity of the smoke, combined with some clouds in the sky allow for fairly colorful and moody images of the backlit mountain ridges.

Blue smoke fills the shaded valley between the mountains and ridges and warm pastels fill the sky where the sunrise occurred east of Rocky. While i prefer smoke free skies anytime, one can make some unique photographs and embrace the unique colors and composition that all these particulates in the air cause.

After what felt like nearly a good two weeks of smoke filled skies over RMNP, we finally caught a break by Wednesday of this week when the wind pattern shifted and the smoke was mostly cleared from the skies, at least temporarily. Finally, one could actually see for miles and miles and those iconic Rocky Mountain National Park peaks and summits became visible again. Even better, we had some nice mornings with beautiful clouds overhead to add color and depth to the landscape.

It seems as almost every year we lose a week or two to wildfire smoke in the park. Some years its less and some years its more. July is one of the best months in Rocky for photography. Wildflowers abound, the alpine tundra is green, stream are flowing but are not roaring torrents and there is still some snow on the peaks. It would have to be a toss up for me between July and September as to which is my favorite month to photograph RMNP but I would lean towards July.

One thing I’ve learned photographing Rocky for the past 28 years, is summer is way shorter than one assumes in Rocky Mountain National Park. The alpine beauty, green grasses, waterfalls and wildflowers quickly dry out, turn burn and start moving towards Autumn at the high elevations in what seems like a flash. So losing any days to wildfire smoke hurts.

At least for now it appears the wildfire smoke should remain outside of the park. Of course there is always the threat of new wildfires so one cant take for granted any of the clear conditions we get over the next month. My advice for photographers is to bring their A game and get out as much as they can because you never know when mother nature is going to decide to bring the smoke again.

I’m not out this morning photographing Rocky Mountain National Park though I feel I should be. It’s currently dumping snow over the park and while I have not seen an official Bear Lake measurement since 4:00 PM yesterday of 20 inches, I have to assume there is at least another 6-10 that has fallen overnight. Rocky after a nearly nonexistent winter season, is now one week into May and official winter wonderland complete with news stations and camera crews, including the Weather Channel setup on every corner in Estes Park.

If there was a chance for some sunlight this morning at sunrise I would have headed up to Rocky for the chance to capture the light but with the roads above 7000ft dicey and the park not having been plowed since yesterday evening, I figured I would stay out of the way and make another run at the park the next time it snows.

I had to travel back to New York last week to attend my Uncle’s funeral so I wasn’t able to get out to photograph in the park. I did get a chance for sunrise on Monday which was quite beautiful before the weather quickly change.

Spring is in the air in Rocky and once this all this snow that has just fallen melts, the much needed moisture is going to boomerang the condition from brown to green to summer like quickly. I’ll take some more snow or rain as we desperately need all that we can get in Rocky right now, but I’m also stoked about being on the edge of the summer season.

NPS crews have been busy plowing Trail Ridge Road, before our big storm, Upper Beaver Meadows Road was open, Wild Basin Road was open as was the Twin Sisters access road. Day by day Rocky Mountain National Park is becoming more accessible and hopefully by next week portions of Trail Ridge Road open above Many Parks Curve.

With lakes, ponds and streams thawed, it wont be long until the classic summer views and locations in RMNP are primed for landscape photography. Each time a portion of Rocky is reopened or revised after a long winter away, it feels like getting to visit with an old friend again and catching up. Well catching up is only a few weeks away and I cant wait.

Bouldering and Prospecting, two activities that are as Colorado as it can get. Some love to climb rocks, others like to pan for shiny rocks in streams around the state. What does Bouldering and Prospecting have to do with photography and Rocky Mountain National Park?, well nothing at all in the case of this blog entry.

Bouldering and Prospecting refers to two of my favorite early spring locations to hike and photograph at in Rocky Mountain National Park. Boulder Brook is an amazing place to photography spring through fall and Prospect Pond commands one of the best views in all of RMNP prior to the lake sprouting pond lilies and high grasses along its muddy and boggy like shoreline. While Boulder Brook is very hit or miss in the springtime depending on temperatures and spring runoff, Prospect Pond also has it challenges and rewards when photographed early in the spring in Rocky.

With our weather being so warm and conditions mirroring what I would expect for late May, maybe even June during a cooler year, there are lots of great opportunities for landscape photography right now in Rocky that during a so called normal or average year, probably would not exist.

On the one hand its great to be able to get out and hike some of the higher elevation trails and not even need to use mircrospikes on your shoes, while at the same time being a bit unsettling. The conditions are the conditions and while we pray it gets better, there is no guarantee that will happen so you take what you are dealt and try to make the best of it.

I’ve been petering around Prospect Pond the past week or so but while I have some decent conditions to showcase this tiny lakes spectacular view of Taylor, Otis, Hallett and Flattop, I was hoping for something a little more dramatic while the lake is free of pond lilies and high grasses. Finally, it all worked out yesterday with one of the best sunrises over the Continental Divide all spring.

With trail conditions mostly awesome right now, photographing Prospect Pond wasn’t going to be the end of exploring for the day. With my car back at the Glacier Gorge trailhead, downhill I headed towards Boulder Brook to see how that look.

Boulder Brook is one of the best places in all of Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph a quiet unambiguous stream weaving through a small aspen grove. It’s an amazing place to photograph in the summer and downright one of the best places to photograph Rocky in the fall. I wasn’t really sure what I would get. If the brook is running to fast and hard with spring runoff it can make photography difficult. On a cold year, lots of ice and snow may be covering and obstructing much of the flow and the stream as well. As is the case all of the time now, tree fall from high winds, beadle kill, and Sudden Aspen Death always alter the landscape with dead and fallen trees strewn over and on Boulder Brook altering and in many cases ruining compositions along one of RMNP’s prettiest streams.

I found the flow at Boulder Brook to be just about perfect. Ice lined the banks where the cold water babbled down the hillside. The moss on the rocks just turning green and the forest appearing only to reveal the brook after keeping it hidden and protected under its rocks, trees, roots and soil. Not a bad April morning even if it felt like late May in Rocky Mountain National Park.

It may be mid April, trees are starting to leaf out, grasses are turning green and early season flowers like Pasque Flowers and Mountain Ball cactus are starting to flower. Even so, April is typically one of the best months to photograph wintry landscape scenes in Rocky Mountain National Park. After a very dry and practically snow-less winter and even drier and warmer spring, snow returned to Rocky Mountain National Park early this week with some more on the way tomorrow.

It’s a welcome sight to see snow return to Rocky after what has been a historically warm and dry winter. Snowpack levels are abysmal to date and the little amounts of snowmelt we have are melting at a more rapid pace than previous years due to a very mild and warm spring. At this point in the season, there is no chance we makeup for the moisture we didn’t receive over the winter but we can hope for a wet spring to triage what can only be described as a critically serious moisture deficit.

So with most of the lakes and streams thawed out about a month early this year in RMNP, and seasonal conditions that I would liken more to late May or early June in Rocky, it’s was great to have a heavy wet spring snow fall on the park on Tuesday and hopefully again tomorrow morning. For landscape photographers, the current oddity of having waterfalls, lakes and streams free of ice and snow so early in the season is bound to offer opportunities for photographers when the changing of the seasons inevitability clash.

Thats just what happened on Monday when I hiked up to Alberta Falls from the Storm Pass trailhead. I knew Glacier Creek and Alberta Falls would be free flowing and free of ice, so the snow covered waterfall combined with fresh snow made for a somewhat unique composition. While heavy wet snow fell on RMNP on Tuesday, Alberta Falls, Prospect Pond and the beautiful landscape along Glacier Creek offered endless unique compositions of flowing and open water and heavy wet spring snow all while helping to add moisture to our severely parched forests.

With another system incoming early tomorrow over Rocky Mountain National Park, lets hope we get some more of the heavy, wet snow that typifies spring time in Rocky. I’ll be out tomorrow morning just as this latest system runs into the park. It may not be snowing at sunrise tomorrow morning in Rocky Mountain National Park, but as long as it starts falling soon after we can all breath a slight sigh of relief.

I sound like a broken record, but the warm and dry weather that continues to settle over Colorado and more specifically Rocky Mountain National Park is really making for some unusual early season photography. Lakes and water below 10,000 ft are ice free or nearly ice free about a month earlier than I would usually expect. Snow is almost nonexistent in under the forest canopy below 9500 ft and streams and waterfalls are free of ice and snow and flowing freely. To summarize, as we move into the first week of April in Rocky, it sure feels like early June in the park.

Tuesday, which was the last day of March, I hiked up to Bierstadt Lake for sunrise. Typically this time of year Bierstadt is covered in ice or at least most of it would be. The Bierstadt Moraine and trail which gets plenty of sun and faces south is usually mostly free of snow by now but once you get to the top of the moraine, the entire forest surrounding the lake usually has feet os snow covering the trail and forest. As of now, there is barely any snow in the canopy or along the trail and the lake itself except for a small area on the west side is completely free of snow, just like I would expect to find in early June.

On Wednesday of this week, the first day of April we were lucky enough to get some light rain and snow over the park. Sunrise was clouded over and so I decided to hike up to Chasm Falls along the still closed Old Fall River Road to see how the waterfall was looking in the overcast light. Old Fall River Road was completely free of snow which is odd for April 1st and Chasm Falls was also completely thawed and free of snow except for one tiny remaining patch above the falls. The falls were flowing at a moderate clip and its actually a great time to photograph Chasm Falls with the road closed as a normally busy location essential becomes a backcountry like experience. In a normal year I would expect some snow and ice to still be encasing the falls but once again Chasm Falls looks like it does in June more than early April.

The warm weather pattern has not released its grip yet over Rocky. Every time the weather looks promising for a good dose of moisture in the form of snow or rain, the system underdeliver or peters out. I keep holding out hope we will have a rainy and snowy April and May as we transition towards even warmer summer days. Were never going to catchup to normal this year but here to hoping the pattern flips and more moisture finds its way over Rocky Mountain National Park this spring to assuage the overall oddity that has been winter and spring this season.

As I keep this blog lively and updated regarding the current conditions in Rocky Mountain National Park, I try to get out in the field as often as possible to photograph Rocky in all conditions in seasons. Scrolling through the past handful of updates on this blog, one could skim through the images posted and think many of these images where all shot on the same morning or during the same sunrise. As a matter of fact, I had this same thought earlier this week while scrolling through my recent image catalog.

The fact of the matter is, since about November we have had very mild, dry and windy conditions many mornings in RMNP. Very little snow, no real discernible snow storms that produced magical conditions for landscape photography the following morning and colorful sunrises with lenticular clouds, caused by our high winds creating all the action in the sky facing eastward towards the high plains as opposed to directly over the high peaks of the Continental Divide.

My motto with regards to photographing Rocky is to photograph in favor of the conditions, not against. So while I may head up to the park hoping to capture a beautiful sunrise over the Hallett or Longs Peak, Mother Nature may have other ideas in store such as a brilliant sunrise over the eastern portion of the park with rolling foothills in foreground. This season there has been a lot of adjusting to the conditions and going with Mother Nature doles out as opposed to fighting it.

As a result of Mother Natures decree, many of the landscape images in Rocky this season have been of beautifully colorful sunrises to the east with a snowless landscape as the foreground. It is what it is and its best to go with the flow but I’m really looking forward to a little change and hopefully some late season snowstorms that present some dynamic landscape and lighting conditions moving forward. While the longterm forecast for Rocky Mountain National Park shows more warm, windy and dry conditions ahead, I have to believe there will be opportunities ahead for things to stop looking all the same this year.

Finally it’s March. In a typical year here in Colorado that would mean the summer season in Rocky Mountain National Park was closing in. The mood and anticipation of warmer weather, alpine lakes and wildflowers is tangible. This year as we enter March, after a historically warm and dry winter one is hoping the months of March and April can turn back the clock to winter and perhaps wallop us with a few classic Front Range spring blizzards to help make up for the loss of winter and more importantly the moisture and snowpack we always need before the warm summer season.

It’s snowing today as I post this blog in RMNP so that’s a good sign but we still have a long way to go even to get to sustainable levels. Summer in Rocky is my favorite season but if we continue to move towards summer with the season being as dry as it has been there will be a noticeable tension with the park and forests so dry.

It’s been a strange experience photographing Rocky this winter. Streams that are usually frozen are flowing and free of ice, grasses and landscapes usually buried under feet of snow exposed and open to the elements. It’s created some unique opportunities for photography this winter in Rocky but it’s not something any of us would welcome.

I feel like I keep writing the same thing in all these blog posts. We need winter and we need moisture in the park. With todays weather system hitting the park, lets hope this is the start of some good spring moisture, With any luck, maybe I’ll be complaining that they are taking too long to open Trail Ridge Road for the season in May due to all the spring snow.

The middle of winter can be a drought when it comes to creating colorful imagery in Rocky Mountain National Park. This has been made more difficult by our overall lack of snow this year which means we have lots of exposed brown grasses. Even so, there are still conditions I look for and tricks I use to try and pull some color from the landscape when appropriate.

As a former longtime 35mm and 4×5 film photographer, I admit I’m a sucker for a colorful landscape. Fuji Velvia was one of my favorite emulsions to photograph with and landscape photographers such as David Muench and Jack Dykinga where huge influences on my early work. Their love of the western landscape combined with their ability to pull subtle or not so subtle coloration from landscapes large and small was inspirational for me when I first started out.

One of the easiest ways to add a little pop to the landscapes of Rocky in not only the middle of winter but anytime of the year is to look for colorful sunrise and sunsets. For this to occur you need to have both sun and clouds. Thats more difficult then one would think as RMNP is often blessed or cursed with cloudless skies, especially at sunrise when the landscapes of Rocky are mostly more conducive to photography. That said, one of the most common types of cloud setups here on the Front Range of Colorado is a lenticular or wave cloud on the east side of the park.

Lenticular clouds are caused by high winds aloft over the peaks. Rocky Mountain National Park has plenty of wind, so lenticular clouds on the east side of the park are common. Combine this with clear skies over the eastern plains of Colorado and voila, you have lots of colorful sunrise. The only issue with this setup, is often has to face east meaning you are shooting towards the Colorado plains or smaller and less iconic foothills on the east side of the park.

Another way to pull some color from the park in the middle of winter is to use the grasses, willows and trees when possible. Ponderosa Pines are spectacular to photograph all year but their red colored trunks add plenty of color in the winter, especially when combined with frost or snow. Grasses can add color and oftentimes brown and red grasses in the meadows can add pattern and form to an image. Willows are amongst one of my favorite winter subjects. Their red, brown and yellow branches create some beautiful palettes in the often drab landscapes of winter.

Regardless of the season, there is always opportunities for landscape photographers to take advantage of the seasonal conditions to create images. Some seasons are certainly more difficult to do so, but these images often help to bring out the beauty of RMNP even in the off season. More often than not, a visit to Rocky in the winter is less likely to find hillsides of pine trees and peaks covered in fresh snow, but a mix of exposed landscapes and residual snow from previous storms. Keep and open mind and use some of these suggestions and photographers can expect to create some rewarding imagery of Rocky Mountain National Park even in winter.