Frozen Illumination At Dream Lake RMNP

An overnight adventure under dark skies turned out to be a great chance to use some of our light painting techniques on the frozen surface of Dream... more

by Mike Berenson

Title

Frozen Illumination At Dream Lake RMNP

Artist

Mike Berenson

Medium

Photograph

Description

An overnight adventure under dark skies turned out to be a great chance to use some of our light painting techniques on the frozen surface of Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. And with this being one of my favorite locations to offer a night photography workshop, I'm always looking for more creative captures that show it off.

With an 11:30 pm start time and clear skies, David Kingham, Bryce Bradford, and I braved the cold as we started up from the bear lake trailhead hoping it wouldn't be too windy once we made our way out onto Dream Lake (aka The Wind Tunnel). Fortunately, the weather held which gave us a good chance to be creative with the dark skies, ominous peaks, and (most of all) a really cool icy surface. With the bubbles down below the surface, we couldn't help but be intrigued.

In this image, I positioned an icy crack in the foreground of a tall wide angle capture. The crack then leads up the image to the ghosts of David capturing the scene and the glow from his HID Spotlight reaching up above the peaks into the starry sky above.

This composite image comes my Nikon D800 and Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens with two exposures of the same settings - ISO 1600, f/2.0, for 30 seconds. The difference is that the first exposure was focused on the icy crack in the foreground with some gentle light painting. The second was focused on distant objects and included the light beam and the starry skies above.

Uploaded

April 14th, 2013