A Shot in the Dark

It's no secret, I'm a research junkie.  When I'm headed to a new location I spend countless hours online looking at Google Earth and Bing Maps.  I look at every image I can find of the place where I'm headed.  Usually I know what sort of conditions and subject matter I'll find before I get there and I'm rarely, if ever, surprised by what I find.  So how is it that this, one of my favorite images, came from a location I had never scouted, never researched, and never seen?  Pure Unadulterated Dumb luck!  Settle in and I'll explain.

This is an image of what I call "The Other Bear Lake."  Pretty much every photographer in Colorado knows about Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park and there are always plenty of images cruising around the web of that Bear Lake.  But this is a different Bear Lake.  Yes, it's in Colorado but about 150 miles south of RMNP.  It's off the Highway of Legends between the town of Cuchara and Cuchara Pass. 

When Heather started college at Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell, we spent a lot of time traveling between Parker and Roswell.  In August of her second year, after dropping her off for the school year, Judy and I headed home and spent a night in Taos along the way.  We headed north out of Taos and came into Colorado via the San Luis Valley then across LaVeta Pass to Walsenburg where we hit I-25.  Along the way I noticed some large stands of aspens near the summit of LaVeta Pass and after a few years of going to Crested Butte every September to photograph the changing aspens I thought it might be time for a change.  I made a mental note that this area might be a nice change and a few weeks later when it was aspen time I made the decision to head south instead of west.

The extent of my research was the trip over LaVeta Pass and a few minutes online to book a cheap motel on the outskirts of Walsenburg.  I packed my gear and left work Friday night headed south for the 2 hour drive to Walsenburg.  It was dark when I got to the hotel and dark in the morning when I left for LaVeta Pass and some of the aspen groves I'd seen weeks before.  And that's where the evil Bill took over.

I don't know what I was thinking.  I have no rational explanation for it and probably never will.  My plan was to head up LaVeta Pass and spend some time shooting in one of the huge groves of aspens but when I got to the summit of the pass the truck just kept on going as if it had a mind of it's own.  Over LaVeta Pass, turn south at the town of LaVeta, and keep going south through the small town of Cuchara.  A couple of miles south of Cuchara I saw a sign pointing up a dirt road that said Bear Lake 4 miles.  At that point the truck made a quick right turn and I was off to Bear Lake. 

Now keep in mind, it was still as dark as the inside of a coal bin at midnight.  The only things I could see were trees and bushes illuminated by my headlights but I kept on driving, undaunted, towards Bear Lake.  All the time the good Bill and the evil Bill were arguing:  "Why didn't you stop on the pass, moron?  At least we know there are aspens there."  "Shut up and drive...where's your sense of adventure?"  "Yeah, but there may not even be aspens up here...all I see are pine and spruce trees."  "Show some backbone and drive...if it doesn't work out we can go to LaVeta Pass for sunset...nobody likes a whiner!"

On we went...and about 3 miles up the road a strange thing happened:  the pines and spruces gave way to aspens.  Old growth aspens!  This might actually be okay.  When I finally arrived at the parking area for Bear Lake the eastern sky was just starting lighten as it does in the 30 or 45 minutes before dawn.  I could vaguely make out the surface of the lake down the hill from where I was parked.  Then reality set in.  I had no idea if there would be any decent compositions, no clue if there were any aspens around the lake, and the cloud bank I could barely make out near the horizon was probably going to block any sunlight and make dawn a dreary boring thing.  I berated myself for breaking tradition and flying blind into this area and feeling pretty down I grabbed my tripod and backpack and headed for the lake shore.  I was here, there was no time to make it back to LaVeta Pass before sunrise, so I might as well take my lemons and make some lemonade.  What the heck...if the light is grey and flat I can shoot some intimate landscapes in the forest.

The rest is history.  I got my camera and lens on the tripod, walked a few yards up and down the shoreline to find a suitable composition, and started thinking about finding some colorful leaves to photograph when this fiasco was over.  And then the magic happened.....the cloud bank started to break up into mini clouds and the sun started tinging the edges of the clouds with pink.  The slight breeze that had been rippling the surface of the lake stopped.  Everything was dead calm and the sky exploded with color.  Amazing!  And the image at the top of this blog is the result.  A case of pure dumb luck putting me in the right place at the right time. 

I spent the next 3 or 4 hours shooting and came away with one of the most successful aspen shoots I've had in years.   Was I lucky? You bet your behind I was...but I'll take luck like this any day.