I’m a little late getting to this post since it’s now mid-January, but without further ado here are my favorite 10 images from last year in no particular order:

Dream Come True

I have no doubt that this is the most intense sunrise I’ve ever experienced. As an early summer thunderstorm dissipated over Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park I was lucky enough to be able to photograph the clouds as they picked up the neon-like pinks of morning light. It was truly a time I will never forget.

Radiance

I photographed these aspen trees from near Castle Creek Road outside of Aspen, Colorado. As the sun began to rise over a ridge in the background the trees began to throw interesting shadows over the wildflower-filled ground below. This is one of the most intriguing backlit scenes I’ve been fortunate enough to capture yet.

Buddies

These two playful mountain goat kids circled each other quickly and adeptly over the sharp rocks of the Mount Evans Summit. I spent about two hours photographing these goats and some watchful adults nearby on a summer morning. Luckily, I had a telephoto lens available and enough light to capture these two with a fast shutter speed to keep the photograph sharp.

Glorious Boreas

I spent a late September afternoon hiking a portion of the Colorado Trail near Kenosha Pass. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms  at almost the same time as sunset.  I decided to drive to the nearby Boreas Pass Road to see if I could experience any unusual light the storm might cause. Sure enough, the storm passed through quickly and violently but broke up at about the same time as the sun was setting. The vivid orange colors in the clouds above was the result of this occurrence.

Monumental Colorado

I hadn’t visited Colorado National Monument for many years before deciding to stop there again last May. I’m glad I did. Rim Rock Drive on the monument leads to several wonderful views of the location’s unique desert rock formations. This image was taken on a very small unmarked pullout from the road over the Coke Ovens formation. The violet vetch wildflowers added a nice foreground to the composition.
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Medano Meanders

Colorado is far from any ocean and I sometimes envy my photographer friends who live in Oregon, California or Florida who have easy access to interesting beaches and opportunities for pictures of rolling waves. However, when the seasonal Medano Creek flows through Great Sand Dunes National Park it may be the closest thing Colorado has to a sea. The dynamic flow of the creek creates endless possibilities for photographing patterns that will never be repeated in exactly the same way again.

Full Moon Castle Magic

After driving up a rough 4×4 road, I spent a July night on the summit of Taylor Pass near Aspen.  I had studied where the full moon would setting as seen from this view toward 14er Castle Peak at the same time the sun would be rising in the opposite direction the next day. I was thrilled when I woke up the next morning to a cloudless sky and the possibility of this photo working out just as I had planned.

Colorful Collared Lizard

During my May visit to the Grand Junction area I hoped I would spot a collared lizard during one of my hikes in Colorado National Monument or in either Dominguez or Rattlesnake Canyons. My wish came true near the Rattlesnake Arches when not only one but five different lizards crossed my path over the trail. These guys are FAST, and I would have never captured a photo of one if they didn’t also happen to be extremely curious. This one stopped on a rock in front of me staring in my direction and posing for about twenty minutes before running along on his merry way!

Wispy Clouds Over Wilson

My yearly September trip to Western Colorado to photograph the turning aspen leaves was a somewhat frustrating one last year. High pressure weather patterns kept the skies clear of interesting clouds during my stay in the Telluride and Ouray area. To make matters worse a series of wildfires were raging to the west added a great amount of haze to the atmosphere. On this particular morning though on Wilson Mesa the haze had lifted and a few strings of clouds formed over the peaks. It didn’t last long. Less than an hour later the clouds had lifted and uninterrupted blue skies returned.

Fourteener Fog

The morning after a spring snowstorm I traveled to Estes Park. On the way to Lily Lake where I ended up photographing the sunrise I passed through a patch of thick fog. The sunrise shoot didn’t result in the image I had quite hoped for so I returned to the fog patch near Lake Estes and pointed my camera toward Longs Peak and Mt. Meeker. I like this image a lot better than any of the others I took that day.

Another autumn has passed in the aspen forests of Colorado. This year I was able to spend ten days in late September and the first few days of October in the field. Some years are better than others as far as the vividness of foliage color is concerned and 2010 was probably not a banner year at some of the “must-see” locations such as McClure or Kebler Passes. However, there sure was plenty to photograph in other places across the state. Here’s how things played out during my fall voyages:

A glorious sunset on Boreas Pass

I began the season with a hike to a small portion of the Colorado Trail near Kenosha Pass. This location is popular due to its proximity to Denver but also for its spectacular saturation of early-season color. Unlike last year when strong windstorms stripped the leaves off of the aspen here quickly, the leaves lasted much longer under milder conditions this year. The trail traverses a mountain slope under a canopy of aspen branches and I took advantage of the some of the nearly limitless possibilities for close-up compositions of colorful leaves and textured tree trunks. After my hike, I drove onto the nearby Boreas Pass road. Starting in the small town of Como this byway rises over the Mosquito Range (and also provides an outstanding view of the Tenmile Range to the west) and ends in Breckenridge. Near the top of the pass I stopped to wait out a violent thunderstorm for about an hour. Luckily the storm began to break at the same time as the sun was starting to set offering outrageous opportunities to combine backgrounds of rainbows and glowing clouds to images of aspen trees in golden fall foliage. As many landscape photographers profess, “bad” weather often makes the best images.

Hallett Peak rises over the Bierstadt Moraine

A few days later, I visited Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph the aspen grove in the boulder pile on the shores of Bear Lake. While in recent years this view has become a Colorado icon, shot repeatedly by photographer after photographer, it’s become almost a yearly tradition for me to visit that I always look forward to. Even though I was joined by half a dozen other photographers on the evening of my visit this year, the company was warm and the color of the trees was impressive. I’m definitely glad I had the chance to be there for this sunset, despite some windy conditions that prevented a reflection on the lake. I followed up with a sunrise hike on the Biestadt Lake Trail to photograph Hallett Peak rising over the aspen-covered slope of the Bierstadt Moraine. As the sun rose, a swirling of high-altitude cirrus clouds picked up a pink color and alpenglow coated the mountains of the Continental Divide. These conditions occurring above a hillside of yellow-leafed aspen trees and red underbrush created a classically beautiful wide-angle landscape.

A sunset seen from the north edge of Grand Mesa

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Wispy clouds over Wilson Peak

I spent the most time this year in the San Juan Range driving through the plethora of locations between the towns of Ridgway, Ouray, Silverton, Durango and Telluride. My trip here unfortunately coincided with some cloudless blue skies and hazy conditions due to at least three wildfires: a large one burning in Utah, one in the canyons near Grand Junction and a small one on Battlement Mesa. Additionally, the foliage color was patchy. Stands of aspen blanketed by oak brush that in most years, at least the ones I’ve been there to witness, would turn color at about the same time were well out of synch this year. Despite these setbacks, I enjoyed creating some unconventional compositions of close-ups, country roads and lake reflections. When I managed to experience the rare few moments where fluffy high-altitude clouds did appear and the haze subsided enough for clear mountain views the fleeting nature of these events made me appreciate my luck to witness and photograph them all the more.

Near Cuchara Pass in the Spanish Peaks

My aspen adventure concluded with an evening in the Spanish Peaks, a small but scenic corner of the Sangre de Cristo Range near the town of La Veta. The largest concentration of color I photographed was on the hillsides below Cuchara Pass. One particular scenic view provided some nice afternoon images as storm clouds above began to break In the twilight hour after sunset I continued driving on Highway 12 (a.k.a. the Highway of Legends Scenic Byway) where I saw two different black bears within 20 minutes. One was watching traffic go by from the roadside just above North Lake and the other crossed the road in front of me just below Monument Lake. The light was dim, making it impossible to expose any photographs with the slow shutter speed needed in such conditions without an unacceptable amount of blur. I wish I would have been able to get a picture of one of the bears but it was a nice surprise just to be able to see them. It was also an exciting end to this year’s trip before I made the journey back home.

To see more photos from this year’s fall photo trip visit the New Photos gallery.