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If you're looking for a landscape of outstanding beauty and drama to photograph, then Sprague Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, must be high on your list of places to visit.
I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks here in the fall of 2015, with my wife Liz, exploring and photographing the area from our base at Estes Park, and Sprague Lake very quicky became one of my 'go to' locations for dawn photograpghic excursions.
I wasn't alone in my appreciation of this spot, as I was usually joined in my morning vigils by half a dozen other photographers, mostly locals, as the morning progressed.
On most mornings a breeze would spring up as the sun rose and ruffle the night time calm of the lake's surface, removing any chance of catching a reflection of Hallett Peak in the water.
But on this morning the air remained static beyond sunrise and a stunning reflection of the high peaks and forests appeared on the mirror-like surface of the lake.
You can imagine the photographic feeding frenzy!
Once back home and reviewing my RAW images (all 13,500 of them!) I came across my photos from that lovely morning, which looked really good in colour, but lacked the drama that I felt at the time.
So I tried a monochrome conversion in Adobe Lightroom, which allowed me to push the contrast far beyond what I could have achieved in the original colour file without the image looking ridiculous.
In monochrome, the heavily darkened sky allowed the sunlit mountains and trees to really stand out, giving me the drama in the final image that the scene warranted, and mirrored the excitement I felt by the side of Sprague Lake on that unique and wonderful morning.
Filename - rocky mountains sprague lake 03.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @45mm
Exposure - 1/30 sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, U.S.A.
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - ND Grad filter used to balance exposure.
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