American Basin. The name alone brings joy to the hearts of landscape photographers, especially those of us living in the American West. It’s the kind of place that’s being loved to death these days, for a variety of reasons, and the last time we were there it had lost much of its charm. RZR’s were parked all over the meadows, the flowers were being trampled by wannabe IG influencers and one had to watch one’s step to avoid piles of human excrement. Back in 2011, when this image was made, things were different.
We camped in the parking lot, within earshot of an ice cold creek whose rushing waters lulled us to sleep at night. Stars filled the sky and the warmth of mid-day sunshine gave way to near freezing temperatures as soon as the basin fell into shade. We arrived in the afternoon and began filling water bladders and organizing packs for the next day’s adventure - summiting Handies Peak, one of Colorado’s “14’ers”. Jackson was about 2 1/2 years old and I would carry him most of the way to the top, allowing him to hike as much as his little legs and lungs were capable. Melissa made a delicious meal of freeze dried something or other on the camp stove that night. Jackson, not yet old enough to understand that the camp stove remained hot after the fire was turned off, managed to grab it and immediately let out the kind of cry that every parent instantly recognizes when their child is in real pain. Luckily, his contact with the stove was short and his hand wasn’t badly burnt. We carry a well-stocked first aid and trauma kit when we travel and were able to soothe the minor burns with burn gel. Shortly thereafter we climbed into our roof top tent and quickly drifted off to sleep.
The Rockies are known for afternoon summer thunderstorms and we got an early start for the summit to give us plenty of time to make it up and back before rain and lightning arrived. The hike went well and Jackson arrived at the summit under his own power and to many cheers from a small crowd gathered atop this lofty mountain. Some snacks, the requisite summit photo and then the descent. Ominous clouds were just starting to blow in when we made it back to camp. Fortunately, the storm brought little more than a few raindrops, some distant thunder and my favorite conditions for photography - storm light!
Though I was exhausted from the hike I grabbed my tripod and backpack and wandered off into the meadows in search of brilliant wildflower gardens. I didn’t have to wander far. Using a Canon 5D Mark II and the venerable 24-105mm lens I got to work developing a composition that included wildflowers, creek, mountains and sky in a single frame. I experimented with portrait and landscape compositions, moving the camera left/right and up/down until I settled upon what I felt was the perfect composition. Handholding a Singh-Ray 3 Stop Graduated Neutral Density filter in front of the lens at 24mm, and using hyperfocal focusing techniques, I created this image. I used Adobe Lightroom and Nik Color Efex Pro to process the image. It went on to become one of my best selling prints and was breathtaking as a large canvas print.