I really wrestled with whether to try to get up early enough to shoot sunrise on
Mount Evans this year. But the way the conversation with myself typically goes is that first I acknowledge that I want to shoot the mountain goats. I've found that the best time to catch goats at the summit is before 8 a.m., so I calculate that I'd have to get up around 5:30 a.m. anyway. Then I ask myself if I'm getting up at 5:30, why not just get up a couple of hours earlier and also catch the sunrise?
So it was that I found myself at
Summit Lake Park just as the sky was getting light in the east...
I'd never set up in this spot before, but I had an idea that good color in the sky would also provide good color reflected in the outflow from Summit Lake.
The cloud mix was pretty solid. Enough to catch color, without being too much to obscure the sun itself.
I bracketed all my shots for HDR, but preferred going with this one straight from the camera and keeping the dark foreground and peak in the midground.
This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. A three-image composite bursting with color just before the sun clears the horizon.
I decided to use the peak for the precise moment to get a nice sunburst. Again, I prefer this high-contrast shot straight from the camera to the
HDR blend, though I did increase the exposure and cut the highlights some in
Lightroom.
Back to an HDR composite with as much lens flare as I can tolerate, and the colors starting to get a bit hyper-real for my taste.
After I'd packed up and was heading to my car to drive to the summit, I noticed the really intense reflection of the wooden fence in this very still puddle. Yet again, I found myself preferring the drama of the high-contrast to the composite.
The lesson has been beaten into my head so many times that I don't even know why I bother with the internal debate. I was able to make up the couple of hours of sleep I missed to be in position to capture these beautiful scenes. But if I'd chosen to stay in bed, I'd probably never see this specific sunrise ever again. In the end, the choice is really no choice at all.
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