Sometimes you find a great photo you didn’t expect in a wonderful location. While visiting family in Pagosa Springs in 2015, I had an idea to take sunset photos on Piedra Road north of town. On one evening in particular, I raced out after the conclusion of a family event and arrived just in time to see the sun had already set. Despite the missed opportunity, I was able to capture a different kind of beauty – an ethereal blue hour shot.

South Park, Colorado is real and it’s wonderful! No, it’s not the quirky two-dimensional town you see in the Comedy Central TV show. Instead it’s a high valley, covering 1,000 square miles of grassland, and situated between the Front Range and the Mosquito Range in central Colorado. It’s here that you can often find some of the most incredible contrasts between grassy planes, mountains, and Colorado’s spectacularly changing weather.

In 2018, I did a solo backpacking trip to Quartz Lake in Colorado’s South San Juan Wilderness. When planning this trip, I had in mind three photos – a sunset, nighttime, and sunrise photo. I’ve already posted two photos from this trip before – the nighttime photo showing Mars and the Milky Way and the sunrise photo showing the surrounding ridges over Quartz Lake. This photo is the third from the series – the sunset photo taken shortly after I had arrived at the campsite.

When I lived in Colorado, I loved driving from Denver to the Rocky Mountain National Park to hike and take photos. One of my favorite spots was the Forest Canyon Overlook, which I featured in another photo I shared a while back. This overlook from the top of the spectacular Trail Ridge Road offers unparalleled views of the surrounding mountains, valleys, and tundra, making it a must see location for any landscape photographer.

When we lived in the Denver area, I absolutely loved visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park whenever I could. It was about 1.5 hours away, and had some of the most spectacular scenery in the United States. On one visit in 2015, I wanted to find some scenery from the Trail Ridge Road up high in the tundra, but I struggled to find a good spot. On a hunch, I parked at the Lava Cliffs Overlook and walked up the hill across the road where I found this amazing view of the Trail Ridge Road zigzagging down the mountain with Longs Peak in the background.