Emerald Lake

Here's one from a week and a half ago. This is a fairly remote place in the Weminuche Wilderness (especially since road construction tacks on an extra 3 miles each way). I spent two nights at the lake and hiked all around and up and down like a goat while I was there... trying to find the ideal perspective on the Needles (Pigeon and Turret Peaks here - both high 13ers).

Interestingly, there's a sign at the lake that states: "Most of the land surrounding Emerald Lake is private... The owners of this land allow the public to use Emerald Lake. Occasionally the owners will land a helicopter on their property. If you respect their legal right to do so, the public can continue to use and enjoy Emerald Lake." Not too shabby...

Comments and critiques appreciated!

4x5, 120mm, warming polarizer, 2-stop soft grad (I think?), Velvia 100f

Wow! Feels iconic.
I'd love to see the transparency or a large print of this! Beautiful color and detail. Great job controlling the light!

Beautiful and vibrant! I love the composition.

The shadows are a bit dark on the left side of the photo on this monitor (small nit).

Wow! Feels very majestic to me. Great color and clouds!

Awesome view! The sky is a tad dark at the top, for me. But that is a minor nit, and easily tweaked. The rest is fantastic!

Really good choice of time to shoot Jack. You brought out the color of the lake very well.

Mel-

Jack,
Is this a drum scan or something else? If you do it yourself, what do you use?

Beautiful. This is definitely a unique perspective and the colors are fantastic.

What a jewel!
Looks like you almost had a mirror surface on the lake.

Thanks for your comments!

Scott & Chad - I lightened the top sky just a little bit, as well as the left side. The shadows are black as can be though... not much I can do about that.

Mel - Thanks, yes, as you can see from the tree shadows, this was the latest time in the afternoon that the light still hit the lake and green meadow.

Kalin - This is just a scan from my Epson 4990. I use this for my initial web posts, then I have them drum scanned later for prints.

Bill - Almost... the wind was not my friend on this trip... though not terribly windy, it pretty much constantly blew out any chance of reflection shots, except in the morning when the light was not good on the peaks.

Great shot, Jack. Love the green shoreline and the clouds that frame the peaks! I've been as far as the overlook to Ruby Lake but didn't continue on because electrical storms and being above timberline is a bad recipe. At what point on the road did you have to start hoofing it? Before it turned into 4wd?

Jack excellent. The hiking around looking for the right spot was worth it. Love the clouds and colors in the lake. You'll have to return under different conditions sometime.

Beautiful capture, the comp is lovely, love how the small streams of water take you out of the scene after flowing through it all. Lovely capture, maybe just lighten the top portion of the sky a tad.

The light is pretty strong, but this looks great. Only two things would make it better - a still reflection and a helicopter on the shore!!!! Great shot Jack!!

Jack, this looks like a terrific area to explore and it sounds like you enjoyed your time there. Not sure I agree with the sky comment, looks good to me with excellent contrast with the clouds. But I'm a sucker for a polarized sky. My only nits are the light seems a bit harsh (at least on my work monitor) on the mountains and the lower left corner has some branches entering into the frame (but these can be easily cloned out).

Craig

I love the look of slide film with this scene. I'd keep it as is. Very nice.

Jack, great photo. The shadows are a little blocked up, but I can tell from the lighting you didn't have a choice, at least with a single exposure. I know 4x5 is pricy to shoot, but I'd suggest taking 2 or 3 photos w/o the grad ND to handle the 'dynamic' range and blend (not HDR) the images together. Most images wouldn't be worth the effort, but this type is. Just my 2 cents. Fantastic nonetheless!

It already looks HDR, in a positive way, kind of a 3D feel. I love it--great mix of colors and wonderful comp!

Man, I would love to see a big print of this. Awesome. Wonderful contrast and colors. Love the perspective. Great work you goat.

The first post sums it up for, iconic indeed. And howbout ol' BW?

Thanks again for your comments!

Don - The road is closed three miles before the trailhead, so yes, before the 4WD section. They are putting in a huge culvert so there is no way to drive past.

As for the shadows, I thought it was more important to keep the cloud highlights from getting completely blown, and also I actually don't mind pitch black elements in my photos. Steve, I've done one 4x5 blend before for this shot: http://www.widerange.org/photo.php?id=506&gallery=wyoming Not only is it expensive but it is such a pain to get the pixels lined up when you're dealing with 300-500mb files! So I don't want to make a habit of that. One thing that probably would have helped would be to use Provia or Astia instead of Velvia - oh well.

The light is definitely not soft, but I love the saturated greens and blues you can only get during the day (morning or late afternoon), especially in the lake. And since this particular spot is in such a deep valley, it's no good for sunrise or sunset, unless you had a killer reflection & cloud show to work with.

Hey Jack, when I was putting together my "14,000 Feet" book, I found (and scanned) some shots from Emerald Lake taken back from August of 1920. Here's one of them. Photographer unknown. I hung on to these as inspiration for one day making it to the lake. Obviously you beat me to it. What a view!

Your shot is awesome, btw.

Here's a couple more. Obviously I didn't do any clean-up on these. The ones in the book took hours and hours, these are just a quick post job.

Extremely cool Todd. Thanks for sharing the oldies. Place hasn't changed too much.

Todd, that's great! With the first shot, I think I was standing in the same exact spot as that photographer was... 87 years later! Trippy.

You'd be hard pressed to be there in 1920 and have a helicopter land though...

Wow, am I late to the party. Sweet view for sure. That fringing of green at the edge of the lake really brings home the "emerald" part of this. Being up above the lake rather than at water level lends a lot of power to the perspective as well. Really nice, Jack!

Todd, great comparison pics. I'm suprised how little this area has changed in almost a century.

Thanks for sharing these,
Craig

Great stuff as usual Jack. Glad to see I ain't the only who will shoot in mid day light. It can be done as your shot demonstrates.

Thanks Todd for sharing the older photos from this spot.