Brainard Lake

Brainard Lake

Brainard Lake is the namesake of the Brainard Lake Recreation Area which is located about 30 miles northwest of Boulder, CO in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The lake is created by the snowmelt from the Continental Divide which is just west of the lake. This is a high altitude lake as it resides at over 10,000 feet in elevation.

For the past six years that I have spent the summers in Colorado I have visited the lake many times hoping to get just the right picture. What I would consider the “right” picture is one with the reflection of the sky and the surrounding mountains in a crystal clear lake. Over these six years I have visited Brainard Lake two or three times each summer looking for that picture. It seems that every time I go the wind is blowing and the lake is beautiful but no reflections. This summer I have already been to the lake twice with the same negative results.

Last Thursday was a crystal clear day on the Front Range and I took advantage of it to try for some fall foliage pictures. Of course I stopped by Brainard Lake. The above picture is the result. The only thing missing from the picture are some puffy white clouds in the sky and reflection. I am tempted to fire up Photoshop and correct the situation but somehow that just doesn’t seem right.

This panorama is made from 8 single images which I shot vertically and stitched together in Photoshop CC 2014. I used a tripod and shot in the manual mode. I measured the exposure on in the Aperture setting of the camera and then switched to manual and dropped the exposure one f/stop. I used my Sony a7 full frame camera with the 28-70 mm lens. The sequence was shot in the RAW format, at f/11, 1/160 of a second, and ISO 160.

The question now is will I return to Brainard Lake and look for those puffy white clouds on the perfect day? Maybe I will just call this good and visit the area for other photo opts.