Whoa, Bierstadt

What do you do when the scene unfolding before your camera is one of the most intense and colorful sunrises you’ve been lucky enough to witness?. Is it a good or bad dilemma to be faced with?. Is the scene believable?, will your clients think you just went a little to far with your interpretation of the scene in Photoshop? I’ve spent a lot of time in the field photographing some spectacular kaleidoscopes of color, but one in particular from last week takes the cake.

I could tell heading up to Rocky Mountain National Park that there was some great potential for a colorful sunrise setting up over the park. It had been a very windy but mild night. The high winds aloft formed beautiful Lenticular clouds that extended from the Continental Divide eastward over the Front Range but not far enough east so as to impede the light from the rising sun over the plains.

Sprague Lake was a tempting destination, as was Moraine Park for sunrise. The location of the clouds and sunrise would have made either of these a great choices. I really wanted to get out on the trails and into the forest after all the distractions and closures over the last few months and hike. So with that in mind, I decided that Bierstadt Lake would be a good destination.

I love hiking to and photographing from Bierstadt Lake. It’s been one of my favorite locations in Rocky Mountain National Park since I first visited Rocky in 1998. It was the experience of locations such as Bierstadt Lake that inspired me to become a landscape photographer. The lake is named for Albert Bierstadt, the famous nineteenth century landscape painter from whom I admire and gain inspiration from in my photography pursuits.

Bierstadt Lake holds one of the most impressive views of the continental divide in all of Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s view to the east is more serene and not as pronounced as that of Sprague Lake below. From atop the shelf like plateau Bierstadt Lake is sits on, the sky is all that can be viewed to the east. And although there are no mountains in view when looking east from Bierstadt Lake, the view of the open horizon and sky is impressive.

So after a short but enjoyable 1.3 mile hike up the Bierstadt Moraine to the lake, I setup my camera and watched sunrise unfold. It was the most intense and colorful sunrises I’ve photographed anywhere. Words and images fall short of capturing the intensity of the sunrise this particular morning other than to say it felt as if I had just walked into a scene from none other than one of Albert Bierstadt’s dramatic paintings.