Be Still My Sprague Lake

Just finished up a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park for a nice vacation. I wasn't surprised to find another photographer at Sprague Lake when I arrived but I didn't expect to strike up such a great conversation with him while we waited for the sun to go down. When I went to the Grand Canyon I encountered a couple of photographers that acted like I was intruding by just being there. Ever since then I give most of the photographers I encounter a lot of space. But thankfully, that wasn't my experience at RMNP. All the photographers I encountered were truly interested in conversation as well as photography. We shared tips and swapped information on the goings on in the park. Kind of like an offline version of NPN.

So anyway about the photo...it is a 4 exposure composition using my new Nikon D800 (which I LOVE!!) on the 24-70mm Nikkor. The backstory to this image is what still makes me smile. While I was waiting for the sun to set, I noticed a rather large bird of prey. Because of the light I wasn't sure what it was but I kinda took a guess and thought it might have been an osprey. I grabbed my Nikon D300s with the 70-200mm w/1.7TC to see if I could get a shot off. Turns out I was too far away (which I knew it would be) but at least it allowed me to confirm that it was an osprey. I had hoped it would come down to the lake so I could catch it fishing but it didn't. And then when I thought all the action had finished I witnessed for about 20 minutes a mother elk and calf wander through the lake. They even crossed it!! Lens on the D300s was still too short to get a good image of the two and the light had pretty much relegated any shot to be done at a High ISO which isn't so good on the D300s compared to the D800. So since this was all going on while the sunset was happening I decided to stick with the sunset. But after this trip I have decided I need a 400mm!

I placed this in the Man and Nature forum because of the hiking trail around the lake. As always, comments are welcome. Thanks.