Blue Lake, CO Hike
Ever thought of going on a hike up to Blue Lake? Yeah? Well, me too! I saw a buddy of mine's photos and thought, "Man, I need to do that hike!" So, off I went..... to the wrong Blue Lake. Of course, I did not know that, yet. Turns out, there is a Blue Lake in the Roosevelt National Forest and on in the Uncompahgre National Forest.
The trail-head to Blue Lake is actually the Mitchell Lake trail-head. This portion of the trail is quite easy, shady and I found it very busy as this is a pretty popular place. In no-time, I was at the edge of the lake looking out. I decided to head down to where the lake emptied out into a small stream.
I set my tripod up and prepared to take an image when I realized that I could not fit the entire image that I wanted into one shot. No problem! In total, since the photo was so deep, I took nine images in a 3x3 grid. Think of the image below.
Now, this isn't exactly representative of what I did, and actually it is a screenshot from my S8, but for imagination purposes it will work fine. Each of the individual images gave me decent focus area throughout the depth of the image. Combining the vertical sections of the image left me with a final three images.
Combining the three images gave me this image below.
Mitchell Lake Prints available here.
Feeling satisfied that I captured a decent image of Lake Mitchell, I moved on along the trail.
The trail leaving Lake Mitchell and leading to Blue Lake was, at first, quite shady only opening every now and then with small fields of flowers.
Eventually, the trail left the wooded area and opened up while gently rising in elevation. Now, don't be confused, it is not as if the elevation gain is unnoticeable or even barely noticeable, heck, it was even quite tough at times, but it had only just begun.
I arrived at the edge of Blue Lake and began scanning the area for a potential composition. It was a lot less crowded here, tho there was more people here than I had hoped for. I was hoping for a decent sunset image. Using one of my phone apps, I scanned for where the sun would be setting. Walking along the bank, crossing a stream and then climbing a VERY steep mountainside, I finally got to a spot where I would be able to capture the image that was in my mind. Again, as luck would have it, my image would not all fit into my camera with the 18mm (cropped, so about 27mm) so I split it into three images as seen below.
The three images above are actually each three combined HDR images, therefore there is actually nine images. This is not for the same reasons as back at Lake Mitchell. At Lake Mitchell, I did a focus stack. The finished result can be seen below...
Next time I go to this particular Blue Lake, I think I will shoot from the top of the mountain off to the back-right in the image.
Blue Lake, Roosevelt National Forest, Colorado Prints available here
There were moments where I was not all about the landscape shot. There were a few wildlife sightings, I saw my shadow.....so, there will probably be an early Fall leaf-peeping season ;-) and a few people who are more brave/crazier than I decided to take a swim in the melted snow water. Nice...
A video of the hike can be seen below. Enjoy! Also, do me a favor, give my YouTube page a LIKE. Also, there are a few more videos on my YouTube page. It's quite fun and a challenge to make them, so I will be undoubtedly adding many more.
See more of my videos here.
