Colorado 2019 – Gates of Lodore – Sunrise

Since the hike to the sunrise shooting location at the Gates of Lodore was not long, we did not have to get up excessively early, but we still began hiking in the dark this morning.

We were fortunate that we had the moon setting as the sun was rising today.  I made a series of images as the moon set behind the western canyon wall.

The moon is so much brighter than the foreground that getting a really good moon exposure was difficult, so I did not get any detail in the moon with the long exposure times required for the foreground, even though I was using a graduated neutral density filter.  A combination of the moons movement and/or the wide angle distortion results in an oblong moon, too.  I could have tried to make multiple images with proper exposure for the moon, then for the foreground and merged those, but due to the rapidly changing morning light, I decided against this.  Plus, I am usually not really pleased with the results of such attempts.

I continued to shoot as the sunrise light progressed down the canyon wall and the clouds moved through the morning sky.

On the hike back towards the campsite, we made a detour down to the river to check out possible compositions closer to the river.

This image with the canyon wall reflection in the river is the only decent image I managed to get there.  If this image is viewed on Flickr, click on the Flickr image to see the spider on the grass frond on the right side of the image. (Not all of these images are posted to Flickr).

The next stop on this trip is Echo Park, also in Dinosaur National Monument.

Until then,

Ken