Maroon Bells - Aspen
Crater Lake
Back to Maroon Lake....
I've been told on numerous occasions that the Maroon Bells are the most photographed mountains in North America. While dragging my camera gear around the lake and waiting for the sun to set I started chatting up a couple from Missouri. On the surface Jenni and I could not have been more different than these two. One of my favorite things about people willing we meet at these places (National Parks, Monuments, ect.) is that there is always one unifying trait; The love of road trips. Our new friends had decided to see "the west" and were driving with no particular direction or destination in mind. They had been to Jackson WY, Grand Junction CO, across to Denver and now found themselves standing at the edge of Maroon Lake. I asked what made them backtrack to Aspen. They told me about a friend who had stopped for coffee in the Swiss Alps and saw a picture of the Maroon Bells hanging on the wall of the cafe. Tall tale or not these Bells are famous....
All of those pictures are beautiful because these are seriously photogenic mountains. Add in a perfectly placed lake for reflections and you get a double dose with every release of the shutter.
A lot of time is spent waiting for the right light and setting up thoughtful poses to get these "perfect" pictures...
In reality there are a lot of long nights....waiting for the sun to rise....for it to set....for the stars to come out...for the moon to set....driving and driving.....
The kind of long nights that make you goofy and lead to 100 pictures like these for every one of the ones above....
