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A chilly couple of dawn hours on the shores of Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park yielded 586 still images for my time lapse video Rocky Mountain Time Lapse #5, and this individual image was culled from around the middle of the shoot.
The sun had just risen and a band of golden light was tracking down the mountains to the west of the lake, like drawing aside a veil from the stage of the day to reveal a glorious backdrop.
Unusually for Bear Lake, at 9,500 feet above sea level, there wasn't a breath of wind and the water's surface was a perfect mirror, reflecting Hallet Peak and the forest covered slopes leading down to and around the lake.
It was an achingly beautiful scene, and Liz and I watched entranced as the approaching band of sunlight revealed more and more loveliness as time went by.
Eventually the whole view was lit, and we relucantly packed our things away and made our way back to the trailhead car park just as the morning's influx of hikers were arriving.
But we and a scarce few others were the only ones who had witnessed the first light on Hallett Perak that morning.
Filename - rocky mountains bear lake 01.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @19mm
Exposure - 1/100 sec @ f4, ISO100
Location - Bear Lake, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - ND Grad filter used to balance exposure.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.