Black Lake Hike, 2019

Being back in Colorado means I’ll be sharing a lot more images from the mountains on my website going forward. It’s funny how the thing that prompted me to start photography in the very first place – hiking in the mountains – has received so little love on my site. I’ve been living in various locations throughout the midwest since starting this website in 2013, which means my portfolio of street and city shots has far outstripped my landscapes. It’s going to be weird to stretch my photographic muscles on landscapes again (and, for that matter, stretch my actual muscles as I lug medium format camera gear up the sides of mountains…), but I’m excited for the challenge.

This particular set of images is from the first real hike I took after moving back. My dad and I went up to Black Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. It’d been so long since I was up in the mountains that I’d kind of forgotten how gorgeous the alpine meadows and lakes are. I’d also forgotten how difficult it is to get the photographic conditions right for such scenes…If I really want to step up my landscape photography game I’m going to have to start doing a lot more camping and backpacking so that I can be in the right spots for sunrise or sunset. Even getting up at about 3:30AM wasn’t early enough for me to get more than a couple sunrise images within a half mile of the trailhead. Oh well, there are worse things than camping and backpacking in land like this… 🙂