Posted by Kurt Bowman on February 18, 2014 at 2:57 AM
I am pretty certain most people understand I am primarily a wildlife photographer and rarely ever shoot landscape images, but ran into some special light. We were heading up to Rocky Mountain National Park last Saturday. I would have normally been in the park before sunrise, but the person going with me was late, so sunrise started right as we were making our final approach on Highway 36 into Estes Park and I have to say WOW. I haven't seen a sunrise like this for a long time...only problem was no place to set up and no time. So we found the nearest spot we could pull over...which was right above Lake Estes on the south side of 36.
Since we were loosing light rapidly behind early morning clouds, I made the decision to shoot this handheld (normally I would of course used a tripod and remote cable, smaller aperture, etc.) so I was a bit limited on my choices for settings I thought I could get away with in low light. Additionally, we had to contend with many houses in the lower part of the frame, so I cropped as pano to rid the shot of as much of the housing I could.
Anyhow...I still wanted to post just because of how beautiful the light was. I just wish we would have arrived 15 minutes earlier so we had time to find a better spot to shoot from and set up properly.
Canon 5D MIII
Zeiss Planer T 50mm f/1.4 ZE Manual Focus
1/60 at f/7.1
ISO 400
Posted by Doug Koepsel on February 18, 2014 at 3:04 AM
Certainly fiery!
Posted by Kurt Bowman on February 18, 2014 at 3:05 AM
Here is a second shot....different peak less than 2 minutes later. I don't think it is anything special, but I wanted to show it because It had the almost the same amount of orange when we got out of the car, but this really shows how significantly the light changed in less than a couple minutes. So since I am showing 2 landscape images, I think I reached my landscape quota for about 6 months!
Posted by Ken Henke on February 18, 2014 at 3:58 AM
Yea, that is definitely gorgeous and unique light! Dang, I was planning a sunrise shot of Dream Lake past weekend, but chickened out when I heard of the potential wind speeds.
In regards to your forte for wildlife images, where you as lucky ?
Posted by Bob Miller on February 18, 2014 at 2:16 PM
Beautiful sky. We haven't been able to buy a cloud down this way for some time.
Posted by Erik Stensland on February 18, 2014 at 7:57 PM
Beautiful image Kurt! I missed this one and ended up just taking snapshots with the webcams from my computer. It was an amazing morning to be certain!
Posted by Morris McClung on February 19, 2014 at 12:46 AM
Amazing light, Kurt! Great color and intensity.
Posted by John Mumaw on February 19, 2014 at 12:52 AM
If I could capture two landscape images of this caliber and beauty, I'd say my quota was set for six months.
Actually, more like a year this year (so far)!
Excellent photography, Kurt!!
Posted by Kane Engelbert on February 19, 2014 at 3:23 AM
Nice Kurt, Yep that's some crazy light going on in there! Longs Peak isn't a bad foreground eh?
Discussion
9 repliesSince we were loosing light rapidly behind early morning clouds, I made the decision to shoot this handheld (normally I would of course used a tripod and remote cable, smaller aperture, etc.) so I was a bit limited on my choices for settings I thought I could get away with in low light. Additionally, we had to contend with many houses in the lower part of the frame, so I cropped as pano to rid the shot of as much of the housing I could.
Anyhow...I still wanted to post just because of how beautiful the light was. I just wish we would have arrived 15 minutes earlier so we had time to find a better spot to shoot from and set up properly.
Canon 5D MIII
Zeiss Planer T 50mm f/1.4 ZE Manual Focus
1/60 at f/7.1
ISO 400
In regards to your forte for wildlife images, where you as lucky ?
Actually, more like a year this year (so far)!
Excellent photography, Kurt!!