Lizard Lake

• Theodore Roosevelt.

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When we planned our fall road trip to Colorado, one of the key spots I wanted to see was the beautiful Crystal Mill along the Crystal Creek near Marble. I spend countless hours looking at various 4-wheel trail drive videos to assess whether I would be able to self-drive the trail to the mill in our new Subaru. But thankfully we decided on a jeep tour that took us to the mill and in a couple of hours. The tour took about two hours to drive the 10 miles out an back trail and was pretty good moreover, they explained the history of the various abandoned cabins that we found on the way and the geographical history of the trail itself. But we soon realized that the amazing scenery deserved to be photographed for its own beauty. We decided that the next time we visited, we should hike the trail and take as many photos as we can on the way.

While we were on the jeep tour, we took a break at one point near a small pond on our way back and I had an opportunity to take a shot of this beautiful scenery along the road which had some interesting light and some beautiful reflections of the nearby hills.

For this shot, I used a two stop ND grad filter to balance the light in the sky and the foreground. The difference in light at this scene is so great that if I didn’t use the ND grad filter and expose for the bright sky as conventional wisdom demands the whole foreground will be in the dark. So, my only choice here is to bracket the image and make an HDR image or use an ND grad filter to balance the bright and dark sections of the image perfectly. This also allowed me to get the leaves and grass blades in the foreground with crisp details. I also focused this scene by focusing at the hyperfocal distance making sure that the whole scene is in sharp focus. I didn’t use a polarizing filter as that would have cut into the reflection and since there is not much foliage in the scene to accentuate using the polarizer. I love how the reflections of the sky and the surrounding hills came about in this shot as well as the leafless aspens on the hillside. Hope you will all enjoy the read about this shot as much as I did making it.