About 6 years ago, I was out in RMNP, and was interested in one of Mushroom Rocks.

Getting there was interesting, being higher than 10 K feet. It made you consider carefully how much gear you were willing to carry.

The mushroom rocks are surrounded by tundra. So you need to stick to the path to avoid doing damage to lichen. A misplaced step could result in damage that might take decades to heal.

I was out that night with Chris and Tim from NPAN. They had loaned me the Iris 11 mm lens. So I didn’t need to do any fancy panorama tricks.

Night photography can lead you to contemplation of your subject. In this case I wandered around the circle of rocks for a few minutes, and my overall exposure was about 2 minutes. It’s long enough that I did a little time bending here, you can see some star trails.