The size of this image might leave smartphone viewers with their smaller screens at a disadvantage here.
In May of 2015 I was searching for a suitable panoramic scene to be posted in the Red Feather Lakes Community Library as a part of their renovation project. After fruitlessly framing compositions at several locations I finally shot this scene from a peak across the road from our house. A neighbour was kind enough to allow me to park in his yard, from which I hiked up to a higher elevation, camera and tripod in tow. And there is was - exactly the scene I had been searching for! Winds were pushing the clouds about, thus rapidly altering the elements in the scene, and I had to work quickly.
As for the elements of the scene, the light green foreground is part of the Boy Scout Ranch, and the dirt road is, of course, the Boy Scout Road even though it is state-maintained. Our house is immediately to the right of the picture where we overlook much of what you see here. However, we cannot see the mountains without hiking a short distance toward the Boy Scout Road. The two dark layers, green and blue, are the hilly walls of the Poudre River Canyon. The 2012 High Park fire burned some of that dark green area, and Maggie, my mini-schnauzer companion, and I were the next to be evacuated had the fire advanced further. Although we endured a lot of smoke, we weren't evacuated. The snow-covered peaks are the Mummy Range, the northernmost mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. That snow pack and its run-off feed the Colorado River running westward and the Poudre River heading eastward. I have hiked to the origin of the Colorado River at the base of the Mummies and stepped across it. Snowpack of that amount is no more.
We printed a four foot long metal triptych for the library where it still hangs. Liking that printing so much we ordered another, each section being 24” wide and 36” tall. IOW, the picture is six feet long. It hangs on the west wall of our den. I can sit in our recliner and stare through the window toward the forest and move my eyes a few degrees rightward and gaze at this.
Who needs TV?
