Rocky Mountain National Park - Estes Park, Colorado

                                                   “X-Shot” Information”

                                          Camera - Canon EOS Mark III

                                          ISO- 1600

                                          Shutter - 1/60 sec.

                                          F/stop - 2.8

                                          Lens - 150 mm

Rocky Mountain National Park in the winter was a good choice for a photo shoot, even though Trail Ridge Road was closed for the season. Still available were Bear Lake, Horseshoe Park, Moraine Park and part of Trail Ridge Road up to Many Parks Curve. When I go to a place like this it always involves staying over night. That gives me two good shooting opportunities, evening and early morning, hopefully with the very best light. The Park was pretty empty and the weather was perfect, with some nice clouds. Everything fell into place on this shoot, even my “X-Shot” came out of no where. Driving towards the park exit, the sun had already set and it was almost dark when I spotted a large herd of younger elk. Pulling over slowly, not wanting to spook them off, my power window slowly went down. The light was very bad. My ISO was already at 1600, a shutter speed of 1/60 second with an f/stop 2.8 is not much to work with. The elk were just standing there doing nothing worthy of a picture but my eye was up against the camera anyway. Just then a car approached, blaring load music out of its windows. It pulled in right behind me and came to a quick stop. A man jumped out, holding a little flash camera. Once that flash went off all the elk turned their back on us and headed up a hill. Wow, all of a sudden there was this neat image right in front of me. I steadied my camera on the car door and shot away. I didn’t know if my slow shutter speed would stop their movement but knew my f/stop would never give me enough depth to get everything sharp. As it turned out the elk in the foreground were sharp and in focus, but the depth of field fell off after that and the image was also pretty grainy. Despite those problems the photo was still very interesting and it became my favorite shot of the trip.

         “X-Shot” Location information:

1. Drive time from Denver is about two and a half hours.

2. Enter the park from the Estes Park side, to get to these locations.

3. On this shoot I liked the morning light the best as most of this section of the park

     faces east towards the rising sun.

Ken Papaleo

Colorado Photographer

All photographs for sale, contact e-mail address below.

kenpapaleo@highcountrycoloring.com