Landscape Photography on Location | Sunrise At Loch Vale | Rocky Mountain National Park

Gorgeous Fall conditions at Rocky Mountain National Park's Loch Vale. Insanely high winds make for a challenge, but we are rewarded with amazing alpine glow and phenomenal light in the clouds. If it were easy, it wouldn't be fun!

[@edgargallardophotography8798]

Dude I was on your website for hours, you've got a very solid body of work, I'm very glad to come across your YT channel

[@MrNegative]

Wow, that’s a massive compliment. I really appreciate it! Means a lot you enjoyed the work, thank you for letting me know.

[@drb9705]

I thought all three images were outstanding. 👍👍👍

[@MrNegative]

Thank you! An incredible morning for sure. Love Rocky Mountain national park!

[@brianbeattyphotography]

awesome stuff! I admire the dedication to get on site so early. Now that I'm only an hour away from RMNP this is good motivation to get out early!

[@MrNegative]

Haha getting out to shoot is literally the only time I enjoy waking up early. An hour?!? You’ve got NO excuse. That’s amazing.

[@davidletz9123]

I thought the square crop was the better of the mountain photos. It just seemed to be balanced a little better, and the red glow seem to be across all of the peaks in that photo. Really nice work!

[@MrNegative]

Thanks David. I agree. I wish I had taken that composition during peak light. Now I know for next time!

[@davidletz9123]

@@MrNegative For this 3-image vertical pano, how did you meter this? Did you do a bracket--per-stacked image? Or get an average reading for the entire scene, and then just do the 3-iamge pano? Sorry, just a semi-noob wanting to know how things are done by the pros.

[@MrNegative]

@@davidletz9123 haha I’m certainly no pro. We’re all noobs just trying to figure it out! In this example, I did bracket, but didn’t end up needing it. I just used the set exposed to the right that didn’t clip highlights and brought down the highlights in post. Usually what I do is look at my histogram in the field and move my shutter speed as long as I can before clipping. I then back off two stops and do a 5-stop bracket from there. It takes longer but with how fast the light changes and how high the dynamic range can be, better to be safe than sorry! Hope this helps

[@MarkRomine]

I love the square image the most too. Tech question for you, how do you blend three images together that were shot during such high winds? With the trees and grasses moving so much don’t you have issues getting them to line up in the final image?

[@MrNegative]

Great question. In this image it wasn’t an issue because of how the images lined up. The moving parts were not on the seam. I usually try to do this on purpose. However, sometimes I don’t have that ability (especially seascapes). When that happens I will pull the merged pano into photoshop, and then pull in the source images as layers. I’ll then use layer masks and brushes to manually blend the seams where I have issues. Sometimes it takes several layers to get a natural look. Hopefully that makes sense. I’ve been meaning to make a video on how I deal with difficult panos, I’ll add this to the list!

[@MarkRomine]

@@MrNegative I understand. Thanks for the reply.

[@thomastuorto9929]

Beauties. The only thing that bothered me with the 30 image blend was clipping off the tree tops. Bugged me out from the first second I saw the whole image. I clip a lot of comps. Maybe that is why. I'm just starting to keep it under control. Other than that, all very nice photos. Happy shooting.

[@MrNegative]

That’s a great call out. I totally missed that. They’re in the image I just need to revisit that crop to fix that. Thanks for pointing that out!