Day 65 – Colorado River near Hanging Lake

We left Rocky Mountain National Park today and will head over to Utah tomorrow. Great news is that all the national parks in Utah will be open from tomorrow… I’m super excited!

The following picture was taken at Colorado River near Hanging Lake. None of my contingency plans described here worked today. We were driving along Colorado River on Highway 70, and surrounded by mountains on both sides. There was no overlook nor anywhere to stop the car as I saw the clock was ticking near sunset. As I almost decided to give up for the day, we saw a sign of Hanging Lake. I know for sure if the lake was exposed to the sun, the fiery colors in both the sky and the reflection would make an excellent image.

Aperture priority, ISO100, 16mm, f/22, 15 sec

We quickly parked our car near the exit, but soon realized that the lake was a hike away. And sunset colors are already vanishing. Apparently, we ran out of backup options. The only thing I could photograph is whatever that is in front of me – Colorado River.

I hiked a pretty steep rocky slope trying to get as close to the river as possible – the reflection of the mountains in the water could be a nice shot. Unfortunately, there was no way to walk to the river as the rocks were too steep. We barely could stand steadily, not to even mention find a spot for the tripod.

As a result, the picture was taken in a “difficult” angle – no mountain reflection image, no nice river bend composition. Any better scenarios you could imagine just didn’t exist. Fortunately I found some yellow flowers as my foreground. It was getting dark pretty fast as the sun set behind the mountains. I had to execute a long exposure. Fortunately again, there was no wind, so the flowers didn’t move and look blurry in my image.

The image turned out to be a big surprise. It was so imperfect to be perfect.

Below is another shot taken 15 minutes later, with all the same camera settings, except exposure time. As the sky darkened, the exposure was a lot longer.